The first time I can recall this happening to me was when I was very young and I had a terrifying nightmare. I “woke up” but I noticed I couldn’t open my eyes. I knew I was awake and aware of my body lying in my bed but I was also aware of a dream happening simultaneously in my mind where I was being chased by this enormous demon. I knew that if I could just open my eyes the dream would end and this creature would go away, but it was like something was holding my eyelids shut and I couldn’t move any other part of my body. Just like the Stanford article says, I could make only little whimpering noises and only if I really *really* struggled to get one out. This goes on until my mom who is one room over finally hears me and enters the room.
She says that she tried to wake me for quite a while without me responding and that I was acknowledging her questions and such with little whimpers but I couldn’t do much else. Eventually she successfully woke me. This is making more and more sense as I write this actually because I recall always asking her to sleep on the floor of my room at night because I was terrified of having a nightmare. (Never monsters or robbers or anything, just nightmares.) Anyway, this happened to me in different ways later on in life the most common one I recall was whenever I was sick with a high fever. I would have my eyes open unable to do anything but stare at the wall in front of me and groan and listen to these voices arguing. I never knew what they were arguing about since it was always muffled, but I always knew they were yelling about me. I know it didn’t take place in reality because I’ve always lived with just my mom and she never had visitors over. It was also several voices I heard and they sounded very close by almost just out of my field of vision. This was usually broken by having my mom enter the room or just simply falling back to sleep.
As long as I can remember I was always *very* reluctant to go to sleep like any kid, but I usually had difficulty sleeping and it took me a long while to be able to fall asleep without anybody in the room with me. I always had very intense dreams and very intense nightmares and later in life I developed a bit of insomnia.
My teenage years involved me trying to stay awake as long as possible until finally passing out after a night without sleep after school at home from exhaustion. I was diagnosed with depression a couple of times and was on and off antidepressants as I struggled with my sleep.
Eventually I discovered that having some type of noise as I slept (when I was younger it came in the form of lullaby tapes played by my mom) kept me from having the nightmares and what I now know as sleep paralysis. This worked for quite awhile until I got older and began to wonder about what had happened to me when I was younger.
I talked to a psychiatrist about it and was actually diagnosed with schizophrenia and eventually a severe Panic Disorder. I didn’t believe I had schizophrenia and never really have believed it. I resent that diagnosis since it made my life difficult as hell and actually ruined several relationships in my life.
Eventually I said screw the medication and screw the shrinks and just threw it all out and I have been in perfect health since then.
But… I still sleep with a fan running every night, and I can’t CAN’T sleep without it. I tried it once recently and I awoke with a nightmare rather quickly after falling asleep…
Tonight I’ll probably still sleep with a fan on, but now that I’ve shared my story… Has this ever happened to anybody else? The Wikipedia page on this condition shows that it’s prevalent all over the world and almost every culture has some type of folklore attached to it.
I find it strange that noises generally prevent me from dreaming at all and probably prevent the sleep paralysis right along with it. Also, many scientists use this condition to explain things such as alien abductions and reports of demonic possession and the like. Is it science explaining the paranormal or the paranormal explaining science?
From what I’ve read there isn’t a general consensus on why this happens other than stress and disrupted sleep patterns. But in my case it felt as though it was the sleep paralysis that caused the stress and disrupted sleep patterns. It also seems linked with panic disorders. (That I’m convinced was a correct diagnosis amidst the butchery.)
The constant hallucinations associated with this for me still concern me however, despite that they were likely dream induced. Their consistency worries me and the paranormal folklore that surrounds them disturbs me.
Am I crazy? Is this paranormal? Or just a plain and simple another psychological phenomenon that is unexplainable?
http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html
Friday, September 24, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Its there
Go to any mirror and put your hand against the glass. Don’t worry, nothing will grab you. Wait. Sometimes it takes half a day, sometimes it takes a moment. But you’ll yank your hand away when you feel it.
Worms or centipedes, who knows? All pressed in tight like there’s no more room on that side, wriggling against your skin. When you pull back, the glass is the same and you’ll be unharmed.
But now you know it’s there.
Worms or centipedes, who knows? All pressed in tight like there’s no more room on that side, wriggling against your skin. When you pull back, the glass is the same and you’ll be unharmed.
But now you know it’s there.
Try This
Perhaps you have heard the legend of the supposed “holy hour” that occurs on certain days of the year: Christmas, Easter, Good Friday, November 1, and the first of both February and August, each day between 7 and 8 am (not including Daylight Savings Time, mind you, because it is a human invention and supernatural entities do not observe it). When you were a kid, this was the hour in which you probably opened Christmas presents and started tearing apart your Easter basket after dragging your parents out of bed, and much to your parents’ chagrin refused to eat anything but leftover Halloween candy from the day before for breakfast; however, more than likely you had never gone into a darkened room in preparation for this ritual. However, perhaps you’ve heard others speak of it.
Go into a room with a mirror, preferably one without windows, between 7 and 8 am on any one of the dates listed above. You do not have to perform this ritual alone; if you have any friends, you may in fact want them to come in with you to help you perform specific tasks outlined that are difficult to do in the dark. (Important: The only light in this ritual must come from either a candle or a lighter - some tiny, flickering flame. Save for this light, you must be in total darkness - otherwise there is a strong possibility that you won’t see anything, hence the suggestion that you perform this in a room without windows. However, it all depends on your own sensitivity to the paranormal; when my friend performed this ritual last November 1, we had to shut all the doors in the hallway first because the light from the doorcrack kept distracting him.) Make sure that you perform this ritual in comfortable clothing - you want to avoid any unnecessary
discomfort.
Once inside this room, close the door and light your candles and/or your lighter. This/these flame(s) must remain lit until the end of the ritual, although I know of people who have chickened out and blown the flames out which instantly ends it and generally leaves them wallowing in their own cowardice for days on end afterwards. You may have your friend(s) hold or light the candles or lighter if desired, as long as the flame is reflected in the mirror. Now begin chanting some Christian prayer - any one will do, even the “Sinner’s Prayer” on the back of those Chick Tracts, as long as it mentions God, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost at least once - as you stare into the mirror. It must be the same prayer and, again, the number of times you need to chant this prayer varies depending on your own sensitivty to the paranormal, but generally twenty times is more than enough. (My friend chose Our Father, and he needed to chant it fifteen or sixteen times.)
When you have chanted for long enough, one of your flames will flare and then change color. (Ours turned red, but I’ve heard of flames turning blue, white, and even green and lavender before.) A few seconds later, an image will appear in the mirror of the archangel Michael - he looks a lot like the usual images of Christian angels, only he has this really nasty burn mark on the left side of his face. Also, he has really deep-set eyes.
Bow to Michael; again, it is important to make sure you don’t accidentally put out your flame(s) unless you wish to end the ritual. After you bow to him, Michael will ask you if you are entirely certain that you want to perform this ritual. I can’t really describe the voice, but it’s not the sort of voice you’d expect an archangel to have: it’s kind of scratchy and overall not very pleasant to listen to, and he has a faint accent of indeterminable origin.
After you answer yes, Michael will explain the conditions of the ritual: he will ask you seven questions, and if you answer at least four of them right, he will either allow or a conversation with a deceased loved one or give a living one immortality; however, if you answer three or fewer of them correctly, he will slit your throat and you will die right then and there. (I’ll admit that I actually do not remember any of the seven riddles from when my friend did this, but I do remember that they were rather arcane - i.e., not the type of riddles you would find in a riddle book - and he seemed to be fully aware of this. Also, if I remember correctly, each one consisted of seven words.) My friend never did well at riddles, so you can imagine that he didn’t get any right, which seemed to amuse the hell out of Michael, as by the end of the ritual he had this big, terrifying Joker-like smile on his face.
After you are finished answering the riddles (you only get one try at each, but he lets you think), Michael gives you the score. Again, if you answer three or fewer right, he smites you. While he smites you, he says something in the angel language - Enochian, I believe it’s called - and you’re left writhing on the floor in agony. My friend was screaming his head off when the ritual was over, and he started speaking in tongues; it was horrible and I’m currently in therapy for this. Really fucking horrifying.
But I digress. Anyway, the candles all went out, and the lighter he had me hold died at the exact same time. I left the room feeling dizzy, and passed out on my bed in my own vomit. Strange thing is I woke up eight hours later and went into the bathroom I performed the ritual in, and found no trace of my dead friend in there. Strange, I live alone and all my doors and windows were locked, there was no sign of anyone having broken into my apartment, the landlady was on vacation, and no matter how hard I looked in the bathroom I could not find a single trace of my friend’s blood anywhere.
A few days later, I got a call from his roommate, asking about my friend. According to his roommate, my friend disappeared on Halloween night and hadn’t been seen at all since. He had called all around, asking my friend’s parents, siblings, aunt, uncle, people like the guy at the convenient store where my friend bought his cigarettes, and even his old teachers from grade school if they knew anything about his whereabouts, only to get a resounding “no.” He decided to call me because apparently I was the only person out of the people both he and my friend knew that he hadn’t called yet. So I told him exactly what happened, down to my friend’s body mysteriously disappearing. He didn’t believe me, and reported me to the police, but, when the police came to investigate, they did not find any trace of my friend either, not even his DNA. It’s almost like he never came over my house and instead chose to fall off the face of the earth and leave his friends
behind.
On a side note, I’ve heard that someone in fact, by some miracle, did get all of the riddles right, and they wished for the immortality of whoever. However, the next day their loved one was not alive. They, much like my friend, were mysteriously spirited away, only this time on the wall of their room there was a message in some mysterious language, written in blood. Perhaps only God and the archangel Michael know what has become of the two of them.
//
Credited to M. Collins.
Go into a room with a mirror, preferably one without windows, between 7 and 8 am on any one of the dates listed above. You do not have to perform this ritual alone; if you have any friends, you may in fact want them to come in with you to help you perform specific tasks outlined that are difficult to do in the dark. (Important: The only light in this ritual must come from either a candle or a lighter - some tiny, flickering flame. Save for this light, you must be in total darkness - otherwise there is a strong possibility that you won’t see anything, hence the suggestion that you perform this in a room without windows. However, it all depends on your own sensitivity to the paranormal; when my friend performed this ritual last November 1, we had to shut all the doors in the hallway first because the light from the doorcrack kept distracting him.) Make sure that you perform this ritual in comfortable clothing - you want to avoid any unnecessary
discomfort.
Once inside this room, close the door and light your candles and/or your lighter. This/these flame(s) must remain lit until the end of the ritual, although I know of people who have chickened out and blown the flames out which instantly ends it and generally leaves them wallowing in their own cowardice for days on end afterwards. You may have your friend(s) hold or light the candles or lighter if desired, as long as the flame is reflected in the mirror. Now begin chanting some Christian prayer - any one will do, even the “Sinner’s Prayer” on the back of those Chick Tracts, as long as it mentions God, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost at least once - as you stare into the mirror. It must be the same prayer and, again, the number of times you need to chant this prayer varies depending on your own sensitivty to the paranormal, but generally twenty times is more than enough. (My friend chose Our Father, and he needed to chant it fifteen or sixteen times.)
When you have chanted for long enough, one of your flames will flare and then change color. (Ours turned red, but I’ve heard of flames turning blue, white, and even green and lavender before.) A few seconds later, an image will appear in the mirror of the archangel Michael - he looks a lot like the usual images of Christian angels, only he has this really nasty burn mark on the left side of his face. Also, he has really deep-set eyes.
Bow to Michael; again, it is important to make sure you don’t accidentally put out your flame(s) unless you wish to end the ritual. After you bow to him, Michael will ask you if you are entirely certain that you want to perform this ritual. I can’t really describe the voice, but it’s not the sort of voice you’d expect an archangel to have: it’s kind of scratchy and overall not very pleasant to listen to, and he has a faint accent of indeterminable origin.
After you answer yes, Michael will explain the conditions of the ritual: he will ask you seven questions, and if you answer at least four of them right, he will either allow or a conversation with a deceased loved one or give a living one immortality; however, if you answer three or fewer of them correctly, he will slit your throat and you will die right then and there. (I’ll admit that I actually do not remember any of the seven riddles from when my friend did this, but I do remember that they were rather arcane - i.e., not the type of riddles you would find in a riddle book - and he seemed to be fully aware of this. Also, if I remember correctly, each one consisted of seven words.) My friend never did well at riddles, so you can imagine that he didn’t get any right, which seemed to amuse the hell out of Michael, as by the end of the ritual he had this big, terrifying Joker-like smile on his face.
After you are finished answering the riddles (you only get one try at each, but he lets you think), Michael gives you the score. Again, if you answer three or fewer right, he smites you. While he smites you, he says something in the angel language - Enochian, I believe it’s called - and you’re left writhing on the floor in agony. My friend was screaming his head off when the ritual was over, and he started speaking in tongues; it was horrible and I’m currently in therapy for this. Really fucking horrifying.
But I digress. Anyway, the candles all went out, and the lighter he had me hold died at the exact same time. I left the room feeling dizzy, and passed out on my bed in my own vomit. Strange thing is I woke up eight hours later and went into the bathroom I performed the ritual in, and found no trace of my dead friend in there. Strange, I live alone and all my doors and windows were locked, there was no sign of anyone having broken into my apartment, the landlady was on vacation, and no matter how hard I looked in the bathroom I could not find a single trace of my friend’s blood anywhere.
A few days later, I got a call from his roommate, asking about my friend. According to his roommate, my friend disappeared on Halloween night and hadn’t been seen at all since. He had called all around, asking my friend’s parents, siblings, aunt, uncle, people like the guy at the convenient store where my friend bought his cigarettes, and even his old teachers from grade school if they knew anything about his whereabouts, only to get a resounding “no.” He decided to call me because apparently I was the only person out of the people both he and my friend knew that he hadn’t called yet. So I told him exactly what happened, down to my friend’s body mysteriously disappearing. He didn’t believe me, and reported me to the police, but, when the police came to investigate, they did not find any trace of my friend either, not even his DNA. It’s almost like he never came over my house and instead chose to fall off the face of the earth and leave his friends
behind.
On a side note, I’ve heard that someone in fact, by some miracle, did get all of the riddles right, and they wished for the immortality of whoever. However, the next day their loved one was not alive. They, much like my friend, were mysteriously spirited away, only this time on the wall of their room there was a message in some mysterious language, written in blood. Perhaps only God and the archangel Michael know what has become of the two of them.
//
Credited to M. Collins.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
String Theory
String Theory
Have you ever had an experience that suggested someone else was in your house, and just thought “I don’t wanna know” and left it? Sometimes, fear of the unknown just seems like the preferable option than facing a real, concrete danger. Normally it’s nothing, though. One time, the beeper function of my wireless housephone went off, when I was the only one home. It could only be called from the living room. Another time, I swear someone took some change from my desk. They’re all probably just slightly disconcerting tricks of the memory.But what would you do when something truly suggestive happens? Would you run, or just ignore it, like I did?
Last Monday was a normal day. I got up, brushed my teeth, changed into school clothes… All little parts of my morning ritual. It seemed like it would be another totally un-noteworthy day, until I saw the strings.
There were three or four thick twine strings in my room. They criss-crossed between the walls around my bed, one attached to the door. No way would I have missed them before; I should have tripped over them. They were tied to pins in the walls, which had also not existed before ten seconds ago.
Nobody could have been in my room while I was in it, let alone set this up. It was early, and my brain wasn’t processing correctly. I simply discredited the sight, untied the strings and left for school, leaving them balled up on my desk.
It didn’t get any better later. Outside my house there were hundreds of them, tied between houses, around cars, across streets… This had to be some super elaborate prank. One of those hidden camera shows, or a comedy improv blog. They had gotten everyone else to play along too; passer-bys were tangled in them, tying them to objects they were walking towards and away from, as if they had been and were continuing to follow the course laid out for them.
I nervously continued my journey to school. On the bus, every except me was tied to the door. At school, groups of friends were tied to each other; teachers were tied to their desks and boards. Oddly enough, at this point all I could wonder was why I had been left out.
When my friend Lucy sat beside me in first period, she simply plonked her bag down on my lap and rested her chin in her hand, looking right past me to the window outside.
“Hey Lucy.”
No response.
“Come on, I didn’t expect you to be in on this too. “
She sighed and started taking books from her bag. All the books were tied to her hands. I grinned, and yanked one of the strings off a book. She didn’t seem to notice, instead simply disregarding the book completely, letting it drop to the floor without a moment’s hesitation.
“Um.” I leaned down, picking up her book and placing it back on her desk. She took no notice.
“Well, if that’s how we’re gonna play it.” I smiled, trying to look playful, but really just trying to hide my nervousness. I bundled all the strings attached to her together with one hand, then pulled them all free.
She blinked, turning to stare at me.
“Holy crap, Martin. You’re like a ninja or something.”
“I’ve been sitting here for maybe ten minutes.” I smiled again, relieved my friend had finally “noticed” me.
“Where did all these strings come from??” She gasped, seemingly noticing for the first time.
“I assumed you were all fucking with me…”
She stood up, backing into a corner. No one else in the class noticed.
“They weren’t here just a minute ago! Do you see them too??” Her tone made it clear she was genuinely scared.
“No. Didn’t you-. “ I was interrupted by my teacher slamming the door behind her. Everyone except me and Lucy murmured a good morning, and still, no one seemed to pay either of us any notice.
“People have been ignoring me all day.” I said to Lucy, before turning to our teacher. “Hey! Dumb bitch! You can’t teach for shit!”
No reaction.
“I’m getting away from all this shit.” Lucy pulled a few strings aside and left the class. I followed, and surprise-surprise, no one else noticed.
We wandered the corridors, leaving and entering classes as we saw fit. Whenever we untied a chair or book from someone else, it was like it suddenly didn’t matter to them. It didn’t exist.
I showed her the street outside; there were more strings than when I came in this morning. Twice as many. We carefully picked our way through the tangle, making our way to a nearby coffee shop. Not particularly grand, I know. But what would you do in our situation? As I said, fear of the unknown sometimes seems like the safer option. On a few occasions, I suggested we untie a few more people. Lucy was opposed to it, remembering how terrified she’d been.
In the coffee shop, we grabbed a couple of sandwiches and drinks from the fridge. We found a table, untied all strings attached to the chairs, and sat down. We both ate in silence, both of us too scared, both of us distracting ourselves by watching the strangers in the shop, oblivious to the strings.
After twenty minutes, Lucy spoke up. “Now she’s gonna take that sandwich.” She said, pointing at a woman across the shop. Sure enough, she walked to the fridge and took the plastic wrapped sandwich she was tied to. “She pays for it and leaves.” She did so, according to the prophecies of the strings. “That guy doesn’t intend to pay.” I watched as a man took his coffee and ran out of the store, the two servers just looking too exasperated to go after him.
“This is horrible.” She whimpered. “Let’s go. Please.”
Outside wasn’t much better. Everyone just followed the strings’ instructions, going about their daily lives. Lucy announced she was going home to sleep this off, and I agreed to walk her home. She only lived ten minutes away.
Away from the busier part of town there were fewer strings. It was nicer; we could pretend it wasn’t happening.
When we turned onto Lucy’s street, she stopped, her mouth falling open.
“What now?” I broke the silence, my voice sounding surprisingly small.
”Look.” She pointed outside one of her neighbours houses.
I saw it clearly, and I’ll take my memory of that moment ‘til the day I die. A little dark imp, maybe three feet tall, walking along with its knuckles on the ground, almost like a monkey. It had two bulbous yellow eyes taking up about half its face, and no mouth or any other facial features. It was holding a hammer and a ball of twine, which it was letting out behind it.
It walked quickly and quietly from the front door of the house to the mailbox. It stopped, hammered a nail into the side of the box, and tied it’s string around it. It turned to face us, and stopped when it spotted us.
My bottom fell out even further than it had already been, but it just stared with a look of surprise and curiosity. You could almost say it was the more frightened one. Suddenly, it beckoned to us with its tiny hand.
I looked at Lucy, she hadn’t moved. I looked back at the imp, which stared at me.
I halved the distance between us, and then halved it again. This wasn’t fear of the unknown anymore; it was fear of this little guy. Didn’t seem like anything to be scared of. When I was a meter away from it, it extended its hand.
“Uh. Hi.” I shook it. It nodded in approval, blinking its massive yellow eyes up at me.
“So you’re the ones in charge of the strings?” It nodded eagerly. I called Lucy over, but she stayed where she was.
“There are more of you?” Another nod. I wanted to ask it so many questions, about what it was and where it came from, but it seemed for now I was stuck with only yes or no questions.
“Do we even have free will?”
It just looked at me, almost sadly. I immediately felt sick to my stomach, and couldn’t bear looking at the little monster anymore. I grabbed Lucy, who had been listening to our exchange, and now sat on the curb with her head in her hands.
“Come on.”
We entered her house, and I made her a cup of tea. When I found her in the living room, she had untied her dog and was curled up with it, crying. I set the tea down and sat beside her.
“I’m so scared.” She whispered after a good ten minutes of sobbing. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
“I’m going to sleep” She mumbled suddenly, and was under within the minute. Sleep was starting to sound pretty good all of a sudden, my eyelids suddenly felt like they were being weighed down.
I collapsed to the rug, and the last thing I heard before I fell asleep was the scurrying of several sets of little feet nearby.
I felt much better the next day, as if the whole affair had been a dream. I’d probably have believed that if I hadn’t been awoken by Lucy’s mother that morning, wondering what I was doing sleeping over without permission or something.
Over breakfast, Lucy asked me why I looked so pale and nervous. I turned to her and smiled, mumbling something to her about feeling sick.
But the truth was, I was scared because I couldn’t see any strings, and was wondering whether my actions were truly my own.
–
Credited to Tesla.
Dead Bart
You know how Fox has a weird way of counting Simpsons episodes? They refuse to count a couple of them, making the amount of episodes inconsistent. The reason for this is a lost episode from season 1.
Finding details about this missing episode is difficult, no one who was working on the show at the time likes to talk about it. From what has been pieced together, the lost episode was written entirely by Matt Groening. During production of the first season, Matt started to act strangely. He was very quiet, seemed nervous and morbid. Mentioning this to anyone who was present results in them getting very angry, and forbidding you to ever mention it to Matt. The episode’s production number was 7G44, the title was Dead Bart.
In addition to getting angry, asking anyone who was on the show about this will cause them to do everything they can to stop you from directly communicating with Matt Groening. At a fan event, I managed to follow him after he spoke to the crowd, and eventually had a chance to talk to him alone as he was leaving the building. He didn’t seem upset that I had followed him, probably expected a typical encounter with an obsessive fan. When I mentioned the lost episode though, all color drained from his face and he started trembling. When I asked him if he could tell me any details, he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. He grabbed a piece of paper, wrote something on it, and handed it to me. He begged me never to mention the episode again.
The piece of paper had a website address on it, I would rather not say what it was, for reasons you’ll see in a second. I entered the address into my browser, and I came to a site that was completely black, except for a line of yellow text, a download link. I clicked on it, and a file started downloading. Once the file was downloaded, my computer went crazy, it was the worst virus I had ever seen. System restore didn’t work, the entire computer had to be rebooted. Before doing this though, I copied the file onto a CD. I tried to open it on my now empty computer, and as I suspected, there was an episode of The Simpsons on it.
The episode started off like any other episode, but had very poor quality animation. If you’ve seen the original animation for Some Enchanted Evening, it was similar, but less stable. The first act was fairly normal, but the way the characters acted was a little off. Homer seemed angrier, Marge seemed depressed, Lisa seemed anxious, Bart seemed to have genuine anger and hatred for his parents.
The episode was about the Simpsons going on a plane trip, near the end of the first act, the plane was taking off. Bart was fooling around, as you’d expect. However, as the plane was about 50 feet off the ground, Bart broke a window on the plane and was sucked out.
At the beginning of the series, Matt had an idea that the animated style of the Simpsons’ world represented life, and that death turned things more realistic. This was used in this episode. The picture of Bart’s corpse was barely recognizable, they took full advantage of it not having to move, and made an almost photo-realistic drawing of his dead body.
Act one ended with the shot of Bart’s corpse. When act two started, Homer, Marge, and Lisa were sitting at their table, crying. The crying went on and on, it got more pained, and sounded more realistic, better acting than you would think possible. The animation started to decay even more as they cried, and you could hear murmuring in the background. This crying went on for all of act two.
Act three opened with a title card saying one year had passed. Homer, Marge, and Lisa were skeletally thin, and still sitting at the table. There was no sign of Maggie or the pets.
They decided to visit Bart’s grave. Springfield was completely deserted, and as they walked to the cemetery the houses became more and more decrepit. They all looked abandoned. When they got to the grave, Bart’s body was just lying in front of his tombstone, looking just like it did at the end of act one.
The family started crying again. Eventually they stopped, and just stared at Bart’s body. The camera zoomed in on Homer’s face. According to summaries, Homer tells a joke at this part, but it isn’t audible in the version I saw, you can’t tell what Homer is saying.
The view zoomed out as the episode came to a close. The tombstones in the background had the names of every Simpsons guest star on them. Some that no one had heard of in 1989, some that haven’t been on the show yet. All of them had death dates on them. For guests who died since, like Michael Jackson and George Harrison, the dates were when they would die.
You can try to use the tombstones to predict the death of living Simpsons guest stars, but there’s something odd about most of the ones who haven’t died yet. All of their deaths are listed as the same date.
Finding details about this missing episode is difficult, no one who was working on the show at the time likes to talk about it. From what has been pieced together, the lost episode was written entirely by Matt Groening. During production of the first season, Matt started to act strangely. He was very quiet, seemed nervous and morbid. Mentioning this to anyone who was present results in them getting very angry, and forbidding you to ever mention it to Matt. The episode’s production number was 7G44, the title was Dead Bart.
In addition to getting angry, asking anyone who was on the show about this will cause them to do everything they can to stop you from directly communicating with Matt Groening. At a fan event, I managed to follow him after he spoke to the crowd, and eventually had a chance to talk to him alone as he was leaving the building. He didn’t seem upset that I had followed him, probably expected a typical encounter with an obsessive fan. When I mentioned the lost episode though, all color drained from his face and he started trembling. When I asked him if he could tell me any details, he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. He grabbed a piece of paper, wrote something on it, and handed it to me. He begged me never to mention the episode again.
The piece of paper had a website address on it, I would rather not say what it was, for reasons you’ll see in a second. I entered the address into my browser, and I came to a site that was completely black, except for a line of yellow text, a download link. I clicked on it, and a file started downloading. Once the file was downloaded, my computer went crazy, it was the worst virus I had ever seen. System restore didn’t work, the entire computer had to be rebooted. Before doing this though, I copied the file onto a CD. I tried to open it on my now empty computer, and as I suspected, there was an episode of The Simpsons on it.
The episode started off like any other episode, but had very poor quality animation. If you’ve seen the original animation for Some Enchanted Evening, it was similar, but less stable. The first act was fairly normal, but the way the characters acted was a little off. Homer seemed angrier, Marge seemed depressed, Lisa seemed anxious, Bart seemed to have genuine anger and hatred for his parents.
The episode was about the Simpsons going on a plane trip, near the end of the first act, the plane was taking off. Bart was fooling around, as you’d expect. However, as the plane was about 50 feet off the ground, Bart broke a window on the plane and was sucked out.
At the beginning of the series, Matt had an idea that the animated style of the Simpsons’ world represented life, and that death turned things more realistic. This was used in this episode. The picture of Bart’s corpse was barely recognizable, they took full advantage of it not having to move, and made an almost photo-realistic drawing of his dead body.
Act one ended with the shot of Bart’s corpse. When act two started, Homer, Marge, and Lisa were sitting at their table, crying. The crying went on and on, it got more pained, and sounded more realistic, better acting than you would think possible. The animation started to decay even more as they cried, and you could hear murmuring in the background. This crying went on for all of act two.
Act three opened with a title card saying one year had passed. Homer, Marge, and Lisa were skeletally thin, and still sitting at the table. There was no sign of Maggie or the pets.
They decided to visit Bart’s grave. Springfield was completely deserted, and as they walked to the cemetery the houses became more and more decrepit. They all looked abandoned. When they got to the grave, Bart’s body was just lying in front of his tombstone, looking just like it did at the end of act one.
The family started crying again. Eventually they stopped, and just stared at Bart’s body. The camera zoomed in on Homer’s face. According to summaries, Homer tells a joke at this part, but it isn’t audible in the version I saw, you can’t tell what Homer is saying.
The view zoomed out as the episode came to a close. The tombstones in the background had the names of every Simpsons guest star on them. Some that no one had heard of in 1989, some that haven’t been on the show yet. All of them had death dates on them. For guests who died since, like Michael Jackson and George Harrison, the dates were when they would die.
You can try to use the tombstones to predict the death of living Simpsons guest stars, but there’s something odd about most of the ones who haven’t died yet. All of their deaths are listed as the same date.
Christmas
Patrick Finn arrived home from his Christmas conquests, beating out the snowstorm by mere miles, mere minutes. He felt not only the foreboding presence of a hazardous blizzard, but also that of something else. Something darker. It felt as if it resonated not only within his soul, but also within the souls of those around hi, within the very ground itself. Patrick had never bothered to check, but he was sure that beneath the grass and soil of Winter Harbor, Maine, therein hungered a gaping mouth or a chasm yearning for the flesh of the innocent, and anchored to the physical world only by a desire to seem normal. It had not yet been appeased because the residents of Winter Harbor were all but innocent.
Patrick had moved to Winter Harbor hoping to escape the despondency and despair he had felt in his hometown, Belmont, Maine. So far these feelings had only amplified, magnified, by both the wintry death that he felt tiptoeing in the town’s midst and the lingering scent of paint that seemed to permeate every building in the city. It was as if the town was constantly being repainted in some sort of halfhearted attempt to cover something up. Still, he felt it necessary to stay, so as not to make matters worse for his wife, whom he barely saw anymore, and his son, who always seemed so distant. He and his wife were going through a rife time in their marriage and their son was feeling its effects. It was akin to what one may feel after a tumultuous earthquake. Patrick felt that he had to make it up to his son, so he went out and bought him the most expensive and extravagant thing he could his hands on this late in the shopping season, a brand new video game system. He had assured his son that, evne though he had acted out often this year, Santa would bring him something good. Throughout these charades, Patrick felt empty at the prospect of shipping for a boy that he knew nothing about, a boy whose existence was forgotten every so often.
On the Even of Christmas, Patrick arrived home before the snowstorm and quickly crept into the garage to wrap the present and place it under the tree. It was in this garage that he often felt abrupt changes, as if within its small space, it contained secrets beyond human comprehension. The musky smell of the old holiday decorations coupled with the omnipresent scent of fresh paint, varnish, and gasoline all seemed to meld into one personified force, whispering sweet nothings to Patrick as he exited his car. This caused him to shudder heavily, as if beset by a fit of delirium tremens. He shrugged off the dull headache and dry mouth before quickly and sloppily wrapping the gift. Following this, he slipped it under the tree and began to creep upstairs. He couldn’t help but grimace at the thought that he was as far from Santa as humanly possible.
As he reached the top of the landing, Patrick glanced over at the clock. It read 11:49. He stood there, as if to wait for some fleeting childhood feeling that may accompany the arrival of Christmas. It did not come, as he soon found. Nor did cheery music, nor the scent of evergreens and cookies. Just deafening silence and that damnable scent of paint. It was everywhere, he couldn’t escape it. The arrival of yet another disappointing Christmas struck Patrick like a blow to the face. He fell to his knees then subsequently onto his stomach. He couldn’t tell if he had passed out or not.
Suddenly, a loud sound in his son’s room jarred Patrick awake. He quickly got up and stumbled into the room. The popping sound he had heard made him wonder what made it, and when he finally found out, he was confused even further. A large, black humanoid, adorned with goat horns and a tongue that writhed like a snake, stood before him, clutching his son. Patrick stood dumbfounded, seemingly incapable of recognizing not only the creature, but anything else before him.
“What do you want?” Patrick asked. Innately, he knew that the creature wanted something.
The creature smiled, licking his lips.
“Thine tender fruit, not spoiled by the worms of new but by the tree that bore it… ripened not into ambrosia but a rotten, hollow core…”
Patrick stared at the creature. Sweat began to collection on his brow. He felt as if his brain itself had been lit afire. He couldn’t breathe.
“I… I can’t say I understand…” Patrick stammered out.
The creature smiled again.
“Not by love of a dying star can a a planet be adorned, but by the eruption of its most sacred peaks? I desire the treasures from which you hope to find salvation. The gift to your boy. It is a gift for me, now.”
Patrick couldn’t understand why the creature would want the game system, but he felt it necessary to give it up. He quickly bolted downstairs, grabbing the box and, clutching it tight, he sprinted back up to his son’s room. The creature, upon his arrival, thrust Patrick’s son to the floor and held out one long, beckoning hand. As Patrick handed over the present, he couldn’t help but feel as if he were Faust himself, exchanging an eternity for one single moment of gratification. The creature licked his lips once more and disappeared in the time it took Patrick to blink.
When he was sure he as alone, Patrick fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around his son. He expected a “thank you,” an “I love you,” something. He heard nothing. He looked down. He found that his son was withering away, becoming the very shadows that inhabited the night around him. Patrick knew at that moment that he was entirely alone, swallowed finally by the chasm beneath his feet. He stumbled to the garage before sitting down, embracing his solitude and his communion with the musky smell of paint that seemed to beckon invitingly.
Patrick had moved to Winter Harbor hoping to escape the despondency and despair he had felt in his hometown, Belmont, Maine. So far these feelings had only amplified, magnified, by both the wintry death that he felt tiptoeing in the town’s midst and the lingering scent of paint that seemed to permeate every building in the city. It was as if the town was constantly being repainted in some sort of halfhearted attempt to cover something up. Still, he felt it necessary to stay, so as not to make matters worse for his wife, whom he barely saw anymore, and his son, who always seemed so distant. He and his wife were going through a rife time in their marriage and their son was feeling its effects. It was akin to what one may feel after a tumultuous earthquake. Patrick felt that he had to make it up to his son, so he went out and bought him the most expensive and extravagant thing he could his hands on this late in the shopping season, a brand new video game system. He had assured his son that, evne though he had acted out often this year, Santa would bring him something good. Throughout these charades, Patrick felt empty at the prospect of shipping for a boy that he knew nothing about, a boy whose existence was forgotten every so often.
On the Even of Christmas, Patrick arrived home before the snowstorm and quickly crept into the garage to wrap the present and place it under the tree. It was in this garage that he often felt abrupt changes, as if within its small space, it contained secrets beyond human comprehension. The musky smell of the old holiday decorations coupled with the omnipresent scent of fresh paint, varnish, and gasoline all seemed to meld into one personified force, whispering sweet nothings to Patrick as he exited his car. This caused him to shudder heavily, as if beset by a fit of delirium tremens. He shrugged off the dull headache and dry mouth before quickly and sloppily wrapping the gift. Following this, he slipped it under the tree and began to creep upstairs. He couldn’t help but grimace at the thought that he was as far from Santa as humanly possible.
As he reached the top of the landing, Patrick glanced over at the clock. It read 11:49. He stood there, as if to wait for some fleeting childhood feeling that may accompany the arrival of Christmas. It did not come, as he soon found. Nor did cheery music, nor the scent of evergreens and cookies. Just deafening silence and that damnable scent of paint. It was everywhere, he couldn’t escape it. The arrival of yet another disappointing Christmas struck Patrick like a blow to the face. He fell to his knees then subsequently onto his stomach. He couldn’t tell if he had passed out or not.
Suddenly, a loud sound in his son’s room jarred Patrick awake. He quickly got up and stumbled into the room. The popping sound he had heard made him wonder what made it, and when he finally found out, he was confused even further. A large, black humanoid, adorned with goat horns and a tongue that writhed like a snake, stood before him, clutching his son. Patrick stood dumbfounded, seemingly incapable of recognizing not only the creature, but anything else before him.
“What do you want?” Patrick asked. Innately, he knew that the creature wanted something.
The creature smiled, licking his lips.
“Thine tender fruit, not spoiled by the worms of new but by the tree that bore it… ripened not into ambrosia but a rotten, hollow core…”
Patrick stared at the creature. Sweat began to collection on his brow. He felt as if his brain itself had been lit afire. He couldn’t breathe.
“I… I can’t say I understand…” Patrick stammered out.
The creature smiled again.
“Not by love of a dying star can a a planet be adorned, but by the eruption of its most sacred peaks? I desire the treasures from which you hope to find salvation. The gift to your boy. It is a gift for me, now.”
Patrick couldn’t understand why the creature would want the game system, but he felt it necessary to give it up. He quickly bolted downstairs, grabbing the box and, clutching it tight, he sprinted back up to his son’s room. The creature, upon his arrival, thrust Patrick’s son to the floor and held out one long, beckoning hand. As Patrick handed over the present, he couldn’t help but feel as if he were Faust himself, exchanging an eternity for one single moment of gratification. The creature licked his lips once more and disappeared in the time it took Patrick to blink.
When he was sure he as alone, Patrick fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around his son. He expected a “thank you,” an “I love you,” something. He heard nothing. He looked down. He found that his son was withering away, becoming the very shadows that inhabited the night around him. Patrick knew at that moment that he was entirely alone, swallowed finally by the chasm beneath his feet. He stumbled to the garage before sitting down, embracing his solitude and his communion with the musky smell of paint that seemed to beckon invitingly.
The Theater
Have you ever heard of an old PC game called “The Theater”? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Probably because many people say it doesn’t even exist. You see, The Theater is an old computer game released around the same time as Doom. Today, if you ever find it, it’s only available on crappy bootleg CD-ROMs, which, more often than naught don’t even actually contain the game. The actual legitimate copies that they say were released back in the day feature a blank cover with nothing but the sprite of what has since been named the ‘the Ticket-Taker’. He is simply a poorly drawn, pixelated Caucasian, bald man with large red lips wearing a red vest over a white shirt and black pants. He is completely emotionless, though some say that if you smash the disc his face is shown as angry the next time you look at the cover. But this is just dismissed as an urban myth. What is peculiar about The Theater, though, is that there is no developer named on the jewel case, nor a game description on the back. It is simply the Ticket-Taker on a white backdrop on both sides.
The game was initially known for its inability to install correctly. The installation process immediately locks up the computer when the user reaches the licensing agreement. Also strange about the licensing agreement for The Theater is that whenever the development studio is supposed to be named, the text is simply a blank line. Anyways, most people who have claimed to owning one of the original CDs say that they figured out how to install the game by simply rebooting their computer on the licensing agreement with the disc still inside. Then they are prompted to press ‘I AGREE’ on startup. Then they continue with the installation. The game then starts up without any introduction besides a main menu that is simply the sprite of a movie theater’s exterior on an empty city street. The title fades in and then the 3 menu buttons ‘NEW GAME, LOAD, OPTIONS’. Selecting OPTIONS immediately crashes the game to the desktop. LOAD is said not to function at all. Even if you do have a saved game, nothing happens when you press it. Thus, NEW GAME is the only working menu option.
Once it is selected you are in the first person view. You are standing in an empty movie theater lobby, with the exception of the Ticket-Taker standing in front of a dark hallway which one can only assume leads to the theaters themselves. There’s nothing to do but look at the poorly-drawn, mostly illegible movie posters or approach the Ticket-Taker. Once the player moves towards the Ticket-Taker a very low-quality sound clip plays saying “THANK YOU PLEASE ENJOY THE MOVIE” along with a speechbox saying the same thing. You then walk into the hallway and the screen fades to black and you’re back in the empty lobby and you do the exact thing again and again and again.
While this may sound like a really horrible game, a number of peculiar things occur as you continue to play it. The number of times that you have to continue into the hall after giving your ticket to the Ticket-Taker before the strange events happen is unknown. Most state that it’s completely random and could take anywhere from the first playthrough to the four hundredth. What happens, though, has deeply disturbed some players.
The first occurrence is when the player fades back in after walking into the hallway. This time they will notice the Ticket-Taker is completely absent. The player then, without any other options, decides to walk into the dark hallway. The sound clip and text box mentioned previously still play in the absence of the Ticket-Taker, but when the player walks into the hallways the screen does not fade out. It goes pitch black as they walk deeper into the hall, but the player’s footstep sound clip is still playing as they continue to push the up button on their keyboard. Those claiming to have played the original game report to have felt extremely uncomfortable walking down the hallway, anticipating the whole way something horrible happening. Well, eventually the player is unable to move forward. There is nothing for a few moments before a strange sprite that is described as ‘the Ticket-Taker but with a swirl for a face’ appears and stands before the player. The original players of the game say their bodies immediately froze up and their stomachs churned they saw this sprite (which has been appropriately named the ‘Swirly Head Man’). Nothing happens as the Swirly Head Man stands before them. Then suddenly a piercing screech plays as the game glitches out. This lasts for a few minutes, with the screeching being continuous. Then the player is abruptly returned to the lobby with all the sounds and graphics being as they should be.
The game continues normally for the next couple of ‘cycles’ of entering the hallway, with a couple of the original players claiming the Swirly Head Man would briefly appear and disappear in the corner of the screen as a brisk ‘yelp’ sound effect plays. Then, at some point after meeting the Swirly Head Man, the player sees the Ticket-Taker pacing back and forth (though there is no walking animation - the sprite’s limbs are completely static, so he just hops up and down slightly as a substitute) with his eyes being wide and his mouth open to simulate a worried facial expression. Some players noted that the movie posters had been replaced with images of the Swirly Head Man, which caused them to immediately turn their character’s head away from the posters and approach the Ticket-Taker. Then another, different, low-quality sound clip plays, but the speech box contains nothing but corrupted characters that cause whatever text that would have been in the box to be completely illegible. Due to the extremely low quality of the sound, it is debated by players what exactly the Ticket-Taker says at this point, though it is widely agreed that he says ‘NEVER REACH THE OTHER LEVELS’. Then the screen fades out once again and returns the player back to their starting point in the lobby, but the Ticket-Taker is gone and the hallway is blocked by a large brick wall sprite. Touching the brick wall will immediately crash the game. And that’s all there is to it. No one knows what the ‘Other Levels’ are or how to gain access to them, nor is it known why the Swirly Head Man causes such acute fear in those who have seen him in the game. All the original copies of The Theater have either been lost or destroyed. But the creepiest part is the fact that is that all the original players of the game claim to occasionally see a brief glimpse of the Swirly Head Man out of the corner of their eyes…
The game was initially known for its inability to install correctly. The installation process immediately locks up the computer when the user reaches the licensing agreement. Also strange about the licensing agreement for The Theater is that whenever the development studio is supposed to be named, the text is simply a blank line. Anyways, most people who have claimed to owning one of the original CDs say that they figured out how to install the game by simply rebooting their computer on the licensing agreement with the disc still inside. Then they are prompted to press ‘I AGREE’ on startup. Then they continue with the installation. The game then starts up without any introduction besides a main menu that is simply the sprite of a movie theater’s exterior on an empty city street. The title fades in and then the 3 menu buttons ‘NEW GAME, LOAD, OPTIONS’. Selecting OPTIONS immediately crashes the game to the desktop. LOAD is said not to function at all. Even if you do have a saved game, nothing happens when you press it. Thus, NEW GAME is the only working menu option.
Once it is selected you are in the first person view. You are standing in an empty movie theater lobby, with the exception of the Ticket-Taker standing in front of a dark hallway which one can only assume leads to the theaters themselves. There’s nothing to do but look at the poorly-drawn, mostly illegible movie posters or approach the Ticket-Taker. Once the player moves towards the Ticket-Taker a very low-quality sound clip plays saying “THANK YOU PLEASE ENJOY THE MOVIE” along with a speechbox saying the same thing. You then walk into the hallway and the screen fades to black and you’re back in the empty lobby and you do the exact thing again and again and again.
While this may sound like a really horrible game, a number of peculiar things occur as you continue to play it. The number of times that you have to continue into the hall after giving your ticket to the Ticket-Taker before the strange events happen is unknown. Most state that it’s completely random and could take anywhere from the first playthrough to the four hundredth. What happens, though, has deeply disturbed some players.
The first occurrence is when the player fades back in after walking into the hallway. This time they will notice the Ticket-Taker is completely absent. The player then, without any other options, decides to walk into the dark hallway. The sound clip and text box mentioned previously still play in the absence of the Ticket-Taker, but when the player walks into the hallways the screen does not fade out. It goes pitch black as they walk deeper into the hall, but the player’s footstep sound clip is still playing as they continue to push the up button on their keyboard. Those claiming to have played the original game report to have felt extremely uncomfortable walking down the hallway, anticipating the whole way something horrible happening. Well, eventually the player is unable to move forward. There is nothing for a few moments before a strange sprite that is described as ‘the Ticket-Taker but with a swirl for a face’ appears and stands before the player. The original players of the game say their bodies immediately froze up and their stomachs churned they saw this sprite (which has been appropriately named the ‘Swirly Head Man’). Nothing happens as the Swirly Head Man stands before them. Then suddenly a piercing screech plays as the game glitches out. This lasts for a few minutes, with the screeching being continuous. Then the player is abruptly returned to the lobby with all the sounds and graphics being as they should be.
The game continues normally for the next couple of ‘cycles’ of entering the hallway, with a couple of the original players claiming the Swirly Head Man would briefly appear and disappear in the corner of the screen as a brisk ‘yelp’ sound effect plays. Then, at some point after meeting the Swirly Head Man, the player sees the Ticket-Taker pacing back and forth (though there is no walking animation - the sprite’s limbs are completely static, so he just hops up and down slightly as a substitute) with his eyes being wide and his mouth open to simulate a worried facial expression. Some players noted that the movie posters had been replaced with images of the Swirly Head Man, which caused them to immediately turn their character’s head away from the posters and approach the Ticket-Taker. Then another, different, low-quality sound clip plays, but the speech box contains nothing but corrupted characters that cause whatever text that would have been in the box to be completely illegible. Due to the extremely low quality of the sound, it is debated by players what exactly the Ticket-Taker says at this point, though it is widely agreed that he says ‘NEVER REACH THE OTHER LEVELS’. Then the screen fades out once again and returns the player back to their starting point in the lobby, but the Ticket-Taker is gone and the hallway is blocked by a large brick wall sprite. Touching the brick wall will immediately crash the game. And that’s all there is to it. No one knows what the ‘Other Levels’ are or how to gain access to them, nor is it known why the Swirly Head Man causes such acute fear in those who have seen him in the game. All the original copies of The Theater have either been lost or destroyed. But the creepiest part is the fact that is that all the original players of the game claim to occasionally see a brief glimpse of the Swirly Head Man out of the corner of their eyes…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)