Indiana Horror Review 2014

Contents

The Serial Magician—Dona Fox
My Sweet Haley—Essel Pratt
Coal Black Talons—Murphy Edwards
Frankie—D. S. Scott
The Brickyard Bleeds—Lemmy Rushmore
A Great Hand—S.L Dixon
Green Blue Skies—Gary Murphy
The Muse—Tony Bowman
Witness in Spiritual Divine—Gary Murphy
The Bear—Timothy Frasier
Cornfed—CS Nelson
A Madman’s Memoirs—Mathias Jansson
Man’s Best Friend—Lemmy Rushmore
System Failure—Jon Wesick
As Before Sickness—Judith Skillman
Father—John Ledger
Wet—Stuart Keane
The Pumpkin Man—Roger Cowin
The Legend of the Crying Woman—Roger Cowin
The Servant of God—Roger Cowin
Yard Work—John Stanton
Zombi 6: Salvation—James Park
Candy—Charie D. La Marr
The Clean Up—Paul van Leeuwenkamp
Deadman Tales—Lori R. Lopez
A Hard Rain—Lori R. Lopez
Caligo—Mike Jansen
Cenotaph—Nienke Pool
The Devil Moves in Mysterious Ways—David Slater
Beyond the Last Day—David Slater
The Devil Moves in Mysterious Ways II—David Slater
Why In Hell—T.S. Woolard
Satan’s Heart—Dona Fox

Cover art and design—John Stanton

Now available on Amazon.

Here's a link to an earlier blog on the Haunted Bridge.

A shot of mine from 1995: Dot Matrix days.

Dec. 10 - just found this one from 1986, before restoration efforts:

The Cornettsville Dust Devil

(AI Illustration)

The last time I visited the Cornettsville Cemetery, I was a teenager. This time, my mother had decided to catalog the entire cemetery for her genealogical research. A long, lazy summer drive from Indianapolis south to Daviess County, Indiana; the cemetery is only slightly smaller than downtown Cornettsville itself.

A winding access road though the middle of farmland took us to a parking place next to an old fence. There, we drank from an artesian well, the distinctive “rotten egg water” that supposedly has health benefits.

My folks, my sister and I took an orderly approach this time, working a grid to document all the graves, including that of an ancestor, William R. Baker. In chapter 7 of The History of Daviess County,
it states “Among the business men of the place are William R. Baker, general store and post office; John N. Killion, blacksmith, and Dr. J. M. Achor. The handsomest public school building in the county, outside of Washington, is located at Cornettsville.”

Baker was a Civil War veteran, and I’ve restored several photos of him. One in particular, I remember from my childhood, because it hung for years on the wall by our front door, in a flaming pink frame. Baker, posed proud and stiff, in full Union Army regalia; the photo caught sunlight and had faded significantly before I had a chance to bring it back digitally. No matter how many times my father teased my mother about relegating the poor fellow to the pink frame, she never relented.

I remember this as an enjoyable excursion, though it took most of our day to catalog the cemetery. Shortly before we were planning to leave, I was standing at the northeast corner of the cemetery, looking out over the patchwork quilt rectangles of crops neatly laid out among the southern Indiana hills; it reminded me of photos I’d seen of the British countryside, arranged in peace, grace and order.

It was a sunny summer day, not too hot, perfect for this kind of outing. As I looked out over the farmland, I saw something odd stir a couple of rectangles over to my right – at the ground, something began to churn the dust and detritus up from the cornfield, and spin it up into the sky in a tight spiral; a dust devil formed in front of me. It seemed completely out of place – there had been a light breeze, but no wind, and there were only a few wispy clouds far up in the sky that day. It seemed as if the dust devil had started from the ground and moved up.

I watched with fascination as it began to move, and then hop towards me like a miniature tornado. It bounced up the hill and paused right over me – I was in the center, and watched the leaves and dust just spin around me. It was eerie – in the eye of this “storm” it was peaceful, and yet there was this energy completely surrounding me. No noise, no wind except for the rustle of the spinning leaves. Just to describe my feelings – I was suddenly cold, as if from the inside out, and I felt as if I were being touched, scrutinized perhaps, by something intelligent. Just a subjective description, yet…

It moved off from me, and then stopped with my sister at its center. Then it hopped again, visiting my parents exactly the same way. As it left them, we all started to follow it, as it approached our car.

On the hood of the Chevy was one of the notepads, filled with details transcribed from the tombstones. As all of us watched, one by one, the top three sheets were torn from the pad, left to right, as if an invisible hand were ripping them off methodically; the pad itself stayed stationary on the hood.

From there, the dust devil made one more hop, about 20 yards past the car. We stood there utterly amazed as we watched those three pages circle around and around, up and up, until they were out of sight. Then just as suddenly as it had begun, it simply stopped. The heavier leaves and dust just dropped straight to the ground, while that which had been spinning ever upward, fluttered down in random trajectories.

We split up and ran in different directions, 20 or 30 yards out from the epicenter, trying to catch a glimpse of the missing pages, in order to retrieve them.

Except, they didn’t come down.

When it made the last hop past the tree line, the dust devil spun the pages up, out of reach, but we could see them for a while. There was nothing but open ground, and the pages did not reappear. We walked another grid, and never found a trace.

By now, all of us were spooked, and it was a long drive home.

Other people have since cataloged the names at the Cornettsville Cemetery, but it seemed at the time, that something didn’t want us to have that information. Yes, it is an irrational, even superstitious, emotional reaction; one that made its own kind of sense to us, in the moment.

From the below Google satellite map, not much has changed there in all these years. And somehow, that’s a comforting thought.

View map of cemetery

A more recent view of the cemetery, by Steven C. Guy.

Below: Mary Jane and William Riley Baker.

Find-A-Grave Memorial

 

William's father Jabez

Dumpsite Diving UFO

(Photo Copyright John Stanton 2006)

Over the past six months, while culling through approximately 40,000 photos for my first photography book, I’ve scrutinized both mutts and gems. Shots I’ve overlooked while working on a deadline, as well as favorites I’ve simply not been able to find a home for, are making the cut for “Parallax,” scheduled for release this summer.

Some photos possess their own unique points of interest, such as IMG_3185, which was shot the day before Thanksgiving, 2006, at an undisclosed industrial dumpsite.

According to the EXIF info, 3184 was shot at precisely 3:27:00 P.M.; the subject in question was photographed at 3:27:06, and the next frame at 3:27: 22. Frames 3184 and 3185 were both landscape orientation - 3185 was zoomed-in a bit more than the previous shot. 3186 was a zoomed portrait shot of the vaguely humanoid form of concrete and rebar.

There is an object in frame 3185 that does not appear in the adjacent frames. The insets in the photo above depict the object at 400% and 2000% magnification.

It appears to be a solid, ovoid or disc shaped object, of unknown configuration, composition and purpose. It doesn’t appear to be motion-blurred, as best I can tell, and seems to be too detailed, solid, stable and high-up to be merely a passing insect. The photo was taken at 1/1000th of a second.

The previous frame, 3184, was shot at a wider angle, from the same position I took 3185. There appear to be no wings, fins or aeronautical stabilizers on the object. Since only 6 seconds elapsed between exposures, I think it is fair to rule out balloons, clouds and blimps as possible explanations. Frame 3186 captured less of the sky than the previous two shots, but still, there is no such anomaly present.

What it isn’t seems to be apparent: what it is, is not. Hence the term “Unidentified.” Make of it what you will.

April 5, 2015

Experimenting with an HDR-simulation filter brought this one out a bit brighter; from a different shoot. You can click on this one for a larger version.

Both were shot in the pre-drone era :-)

Another odd whatchamacallit in the sky, Oct. 20, 2017, while out on an infrared shoot. Not a clue what that could be. This seems to be turning into a running theme.