Of Shadow and Substance...

- A new Anthology, with cover art by Yours Truly.


Of Shadow and Substance

Things That Go “Uuuungh” In The Night

Last Monday AM, around 1:50, Flo was sitting at my computer, and I was in my chair, about 10 feet away. She’d been doing some online research, and turned to chat with me – we’d been talking for a few minutes, and she was mid-sentence when a loud noise practically drowned her out.

It was a very load moan or groan, “Uuuungh,” deep and resonant. The best I can describe it: as if someone had plunged a butcher knife into the gut of a large, robust old man. To me, the sound appeared directly between us. Flo told me that she thought it might have come from out back, though the window and door in that direction were shut tight. Still, we checked both out front and back, and found nothing whatsoever to account for the sound.

Sounds rarely rouse me when I’m asleep (my Brown Noise track drowns out everything), and if they do, if I can’t find anything to account for them, I write the experience off as an artifact from dreaming. But, when something like this happens when I’m awake, and there’s a witness, that shines a different light on the phenomenon.

Micro-anomalies are for the most part overlooked, I think, because there is simply nothing of value that you can extrapolate from them, at least not individually. If, say, tens of thousands of fish or frogs dropped from a clear sky into your neighborhood, it would provoke mass speculation; theories would abound, and range from freakish weather to black holes to Biblical plagues.

We’ve lived in this house for a number of years now, and while we’ve had a fair share of these micro-anomalies, the “groaning old man” is not a regular occurrence; nor am I inclined to call TAPS and report a haunting. If the groan appeared regularly, I’d be sure to record and time it, and stake out various possible entry points – but I doubt he – whatever “he” might be, will cooperate.

The natural tendency is to toe-tag such happenings and file them away in the “unexplained” drawer. The event is neither broad nor significant enough to make any useful speculations about – and if you dwell on it enough, you will look like a nut to everybody else.

I once approached an ATM just as the woman ahead of me left; the machine displayed “Thank you, Mrs. Stanton” for a few seconds, and I turned to see her climb into an elegant white car with an Ohio license plate. I never saw her before, and had no idea if she was related to me – in fact, the happenstance is only significant if I feel that it is to me – yet it is not a commonplace occurrence. How often might I have stood behind or in front of another Stanton in some line somewhere, and simply not known it? What were the odds that I would have noticed this time?

Synchronicity can be incidental – such as a name or verbal pun – or a physical event – something tangible beyond syntax and the coincidences of language.

One Thanksgiving when I was a teenager, we heard the screech of tires, and an ensuing ruckus out front – a child had bolted from our next door neighbor’s front yard, and a middle-aged woman had almost hit her – in fact, she had run over the very tips of the little girl’s shoes; the child was unharmed, but both she and the driver were almost in shock from the near-tragedy. The driver was rushing home after making a last moment purchase for the holiday dinner. She wanted everything to be perfect, because her son, who lived out of state, was visiting for the first time in years.

Almost exactly an hour later, another screech, another ruckus out front. Another neighborhood child, about the same age as the first, bolted into the street, from the same place in the same yard. This time, she was hit, and her leg was broken. You guessed it – this driver was the first driver’s son, who didn’t want to be late for Thanksgiving dinner.

This was on a quiet side-street, not a thoroughfare. There was no geographical reason why a child would choose to cross at this point over any other, and neither child had been visiting next door. Both had just been walking along, and for no understandable reason, had chosen that place and moment to run across the street.

Micro-anomalies – the eerie confluence of implied purpose and possibility – if you catalog enough of these, they just might be sufficient to entertain a dinner guest or two, but they also have a cumulative, disquieting effect. Like a pixel-glitch, a video-hiccup in the face of the person across from you.

At the signpost, up ahead…


While you're at it, check out the publications below - I have an article and three photos in Twisted Dreams, and a photo on the title page in NexGen Pulp.

Order Twisted Dreams Magazine

NexGen Pulp Subscription

Long Distance Call

The phone call came one cold January evening; it was my father’s ex-fiancé. They had been engaged for a short while, some time before he eventually met and married the woman who would be my mother. Dad never really talked about the personal details of the relationship, but he made it clear he didn’t think they would have been good together. Still, over the decades, she would contact my father. I don’t remember any visits from her, but my mother knew her enough to recognize her, and knew her voice on the phone.

She tried several times to get back together with my father, which of course really piqued mom, that she would have such gall, all those years later. I’m not sure when the last time was that Joanne contacted dad, but I was at least a teenager; perhaps it was even after Flo and I were married.

Dad called my mother over to the phone, and had her listen in for a few minutes. It was definitely Joanne’s voice, mom later concurred. All told, they chatted for at least twenty minutes. Shortly after the conversation ended, dad called me.

The strangest thing about the conversation with Joanne, at least so I thought at the time, was that she had been murdered six years earlier.

According to D. Scott Rogo in his book “Phone Calls from the Dead,” recipients of these calls generally appear to be “blocked” somehow from recalling that the person on the other side of the conversation has died, until the call is ended. This apparently is what happened to both of my folks.

Dad insisted it was Joanne, and said she’d spoken of things only she could have known about. Flo and I visited, and we all talked about the conversation at length. Mom shortly blanked on any details she might have remembered, but still remembers firmly that it was Joanne. At the time, dad recounted a few trivialities from the conversation, though he left out details of most of it; and when pressed, his response was disturbing. There was some part he didn’t want to speak of, and said he would talk about later. That part, he later denied remembering, or that it was in any way significant.

I brought it up a few more times, and while we occasionally chatted about how strange it all was, he always managed to evade any more discussion of the content of the conversation.

My father died of a heart attack three months after that phone call.

***

Later that year, I was home when I heard a gentle tapping on the front door. It rather startled me, because it was identical to my father’s unique knock; I’ve not heard it since.

When I looked outside, I saw it was the postman who had knocked. He had left a package, wrapped in brown paper, at the door.

The package was from Joanne’s mother, with whom I’d never had contact. It contained a photo of a group of soldiers–one of them was my father. There was a short note, just saying she thought I should have this.

It arrived on my birthday.

Addendum: August 29, 2020

Back in 1986, before the Internet opened up to the rest of us, computer bulletin-board systems popped up all over the country. I had come across a number of them that were dedicated to the more non-ordinary aspects of life – a couple of different approaches on all things Fortean, some centered on psychic phenomena, others on UFOs, and still more focused on categories of paranormal phenomena. I made a list of the best, and conducted and recorded phone interviews with several of the SYSOPs. Up until the bulletin boards, there weren’t any organizations the average person could contact regarding any of these phenoms, and if you happened to encounter something interesting or disturbing of such nature, you would have months to wait for any of a small handful of magazines to bring any insight into reports – or clusters – of these events. With the reporting, culling, and sharing of information in any of these lines of interest, it occurred to me that we could be on the verge of a greater understanding, if possible, of at least, whatever aspects might be empirically quantifiable. It should be possible, I thought, to quickly identify clusters, “hot spots,” and overlapping phenomena. I wrote up a proposal for an article, and sent it to Fate Magazine, with the hopes they might be excited about such possibilities.

It was disappointing when, instead of responding to my query, I received back from Fate, a rate-sheet for advertising, along with a rather snide note. I wrote back that I had no financial investment in any of the paranormal bulletin boards, and, in fact, none of the boards themselves were for-profit operations. In my research for this piece, I was impressed by not only the technical implementation of the boards and the easy access to all types of information, but the professionalism, respect and dedication of the SYSOPs I had interviewed.

With my life-long interests and experiences, I’d had high hopes for a home for some of my writings with Fate. That was dashed rather quickly when Mary Margaret Fuller, Senior Editor and wife of the founder and publisher, took umbrage to my attempt to correct her circulation manager. She made it clear that Fate viewed the bulletin boards as a crushing competition rather than as a resource of unparalleled potential.

At a loss for what to do with my piece, I tried once more. I wrote to D. Scott Rogo, who at that time wrote a regular column, “Parapsychology Today,” for Fate, and offered him my voluminous research. He politely wrote back that he wasn’t “interested in computers.” I thought that was a bit parochial tact for “Parapsychology Today.” My research went into File #13, but I kept the signed letter from Rogo.

Looking back, I notice also that Rogo’s letter was postmarked August 25, my birthday.

In one final eerie twist, back to where this circle began with Joanne and “Phone Calls from the Dead,” D. Scott Rogo himself was murdered four years later.

 

 

 

 

Twisted Dreams

For those of you (Both of you!) who read my “Synchronicity and Dark Dreams” blog from a few weeks ago, I pulled it because I had the opportunity to submit it for publication. It will appear, along with three of my photos, in the June issue of “Twisted Dreams” – I’ll put a link up at www.3AMBlue.com when it’s available.

Requiem for the Damned

“By the damned, I mean the excluded.” - Charles Fort.

What I photograph fits this criteria. The abandoned – a shack at the edge of a cornfield, a derelict factory, an asylum that’s home only to rats, ghosts, the memory of horror.

I find an ancient tree, etched with character, shortly before it is cut down and fed through a wood chipper. I make a study of a stone chimney standing long after its house burned away from it, or a ruined cinderblock filling station; I often find my subject just before the wrecking ball excises the scar, and all trace of memory. This is my art.

I come across abandoned domestic rubble beneath an overpass; a makeshift table, a tiny wooden chair, a mattress dragged who knows how far; a long screwdriver, stuck in the ground behind weeds – easy to grasp for self-defense. A thick folder of seemingly random newspaper clippings, hidden in an electrical box.

Factory walls and railroad cars tagged by artists, bangers or just someone who just wanted to leave his name behind after he no longer needed it.

Transient relics of our transient existence.

The abandoned. The excluded. The damned.

A fat spider I found hanging on its web in the gap between fence and gate, dangling above chain and rusted padlock guarding yet another empty factory… appears on the cover of “Requiem for the Damned,” an Anthology of Horror that goes on sale February 22, 2008.

With fiction by:

Jennifer L. Miller
Eric Enck
Jordan M. Bobe
Cassandra Lee
Dave Rex
Jessica Lynn Gardner
Kevin Lucia
John Stanton
Charlotte Emma Gledson
Jane Timm Baxter
Colin M. Maguire
Scott Harper
Matthew Alan Pierce
Stephen W. Roberts
Michael A. Beaudry

Order a copy here: http://www.lulu.com/content/2088659
Or click on the link from my web site:
http://www.3AMBlue.com

Trainbending

I bought my first tape recorder when I was 11 years old; it may date me, but it was a little portable reel-to-reel unit that required a 9-volt battery and four C-cells to operate. My father bought an identical unit, and for a few weeks, we had a blast, recording everything we could think of - nature, sounds around the house, radio and TV broadcasts. I recorded dad's voice off of the police-band radio - he was a dispatcher at IPD at the time. We made recordings of ridiculous, spontaneous skits and silliness-I remember dad's "Granny Goggins" voice, doing an advertisement for "good 'ol Poison Oatmeal," a not very kind send-up of our regular breakfast mucilage.

A lifetime later and a couple of lifetimes ago, I was a recording engineer for a small local studio, doing grunt work mostly. Often my responsibilities entailed such exciting tasks as tearing down worn speaker systems from restaurants my boss had acquired from fixture-auctions after a local business went bust. It was also my job to replace the wiring from these speakers, which was so old that the insulation was cracked and falling off. Then, he'd resell these components as new to his customers. Sometimes my job was multi-tracking commercial jingles in his studio; at other times I'd be vacuuming birdseed from the walls - he'd picked up used carpeting cheap from a pet shop, and used it to soundproof his studio.

Once in a while, though, I'd get a choice assignment, like running the audio mixers for a fashion show downtown. My boss brought a couple of his Ampex tape decks - old enough to have recorded Caruso live, and of course, one of them was D.O.A. He offered to rent my Teac deck, and sent me home in his station wagon to pick it up. His wagon ran out of gas six blocks from the event, so I coasted into a parking lot, then chunked the 65 lb. deck the rest of the way, and still managed to set it up in time for the show.

I loved that Teac deck, and occasionally had the chance to make some interesting recordings while we had it: original compositions by Flo and myself, and a number of local bands. Still, it was A/C, and too bulky to really make any field recordings like I did with my first recorder.

Times have changed, and now I have a digital field recorder - a shirt-pocket stereo that has more built-in effects than my old cheapskate boss could cram into his cheesy studio, and the darned thing cost about as much as a camera you can buy at a grocery store.

I need to add a little "multi" to my visual "media" these days, and I'm in need of some original soundtracks to add to my photographic art slide shows. To entertain myself once, I sliced Slash's guitar solo from "November Rain" and added it to one of my slide shows; but of course I can't use anything of the sort in a public venue. Besides, artistically, I'd prefer the whole thing to be original, even if I could use someone else's music.

So, Flo and I are taking the recorder with us on our photo shoots. The audio dimension has been an interesting experience-forcing us to notice sounds around us when the emphasis has always been on the visual. And, I feel like a kid again, recording sounds we usually ignore or take for granted. A rusty door hinge, a power drill: sounds around the house, as well as urban noise or rural ambience. We've both tried to record our cats purring, but the wily little devils clam up at the first nuance of anything unfamiliar.

A couple of weeks ago, we returned to one of our favorite haunts, the docks down at Eagle Creek Reservoir, and the ominous oak I photographed last winter for the cover of "Midrash." Down at the water's edge, I recorded the sound of a distant train, echoing across the reservoir, along with splashing fish, and a clanging buoy that fit in with the train sounds. I looped a thumping bass, added a couple of notes and a crunch guitar chord from the P.D. "Loopology" files from Adobe Audition, and then set about playing with the field recordings.

I need a driving, urban beat-something perhaps reminiscent of Tangerine Dream, or eerie and moody like an early Pink Floyd song. Perhaps something provocative, like *Skozey's Noisician tracks: a functional, quasi-musical hybrid of digital noise and rhythm. Music that, like photography, gives the brain a chance to cool off from the verbal modality, yet still keep the juices flowing.

If you'd like to give a listen, you can check out some of my tracks on SoundCloud.

Later,

John

* Skozey in Synchronicity and Where's George?

Skozey on SoundCloud

Return to Central State

A little over a week ago, ambitious plans to redevelop the grounds of the former Central State Asylum were announced on local TV. This rejuvenation is long overdue, and should help to revitalize the entire neighborhood. The project will take up to a decade to complete, but demolition could commence as early as next spring. So, we will return several more times with photographic and audio equipment, to capture what we can of the ambience of one of Indiana's most haunted sites. I wonder what it will be like; to live there, say twenty years from now.

By the way, there is an eerie Central State documentary on DVD - you can find more information at http://www.central-state.com/.