Cullan Hudson's Blog, page 10

Mysterious Unmoving Mirror

Jeffrey DuRossier lay dying in a ward at the War Memorial Hospital in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan. His nurse, Adeline Neuf, watched over his final hours. At one point, the old man suddenly awoke from his ceaseless slumbering to beg with an exhausted voice for a mirror.

Feeling this might be his last words ever, Adeline promptly snatched an unremarkable mirror from a table nearby. The old man took the piece of glass into his trembling hands and drew it up to his face. DuRossier cried out in terror and tossed the mirror to the bedside table. But it did not break.

Startled, Nurse Adeline raced over to the old man. The commotion brought in others from outside the room as well. Before collapsing into unconsciousness, DuRossier whispered one final thought that everyone in the room heard: "That mirror. You won't be able to pick it up."

Later, after DuRossier had passed, the nurse prepared the room for another patient. She went to pick up the mirror from the table, but to her horror it remained steadfastly affixed to where it lay. Frightened, Nurse Adeline raced into the hall to fetch a doctor. She had to prove to herself that this couldn't be real.

When she explained the situation to the man, he chuckled in disbelief and explained that it was all just in her mind. To prove so, he went in to show her how easily the mirror could, in fact, be plucked from its place. The smile that once rested condescendingly comfortable on the doctor's face quickly vanished with the disturbing fact that the nurse was correct.

Over the next 24 hours, many of the staff came into the room to see for themselves the seemingly cursed mirror that would not move.

The next day, when Nurse Adeline returned for her next shift, she once more confronted the mysterious mirror. The fellow patients in the ward looked on nervously as she attempted once again to lift it from its resting place. The woman had scarcely touched the thing with one tremulous finger when it suddenly exploded upward into the air and clattered back down, again without breaking.

From then on, the mirror could be picked up as easily as it always could. Interested parties with the wherewithal to do so examined the mirror and found no traces of any adhesives that could explain why the mirror clung so fiercely to the bedside table.

What did the old man see? And why did he proclaim that the mirror would not move? As weird as the circumstances are, they might just have been weirder still if only we could have seen things through the eyes of Jeffrey DuRossier.

Comic Con Panel with Paranormal Pop Culture Guru

Yesterday, I made a mad dash (fighting post game-day traffic) to Tulsa for the Wizard World Comic Con where I sat on a panel with Teri White of Tulsa Spirit Tours and the book Tulsa's Haunted Memories and Paranormal Pop Culture's Aaron Sagers who weighs in on the paranormal in books, movies, and TV for the likes of the Huffington Post, MTV, and others. I met a lot of great locals and to any of you who were in attendance that have a story or two to tell, my ears are wide open. Shoot me an email and tell me your weird tale.

Tulsa Comic Con Appearance

Come out to Wizard World Comic Con this Saturday from 6 to 7 at the Cox Business Center in Tulsa. I and other local purveyors of the paranormal, including Tulsa's own Teri White (PITT; Tulsa Spirit Tours; author of Tulsa's Haunted Memories) will be discussing local legends and sightings on a panel hosted by Paranormal Pop Culture's Aaron Sager.

WRITE IN THE DEAD OF WINTER (REDUX)

I gave it a shot last winter without any success, but I'm not ready to throw in the towel quite yet. To that end, I'm resurrecting the mouldering corpse of last year's inaugural WRITE IN THE DEAD OF WINTER contest, but doing so early enough that hopefully more people will get on board. I don't have all the details hammered out, but I'm thinking cash prize and I'll post the entries at a new blog I'm setting up: Dark Passages, which is incidentally the name of the new imprint for all Whorl Books horror titles going forward. Maybe we'll even publish some type of anthology.

So click your pens, whip out your laptops, or pluck a quill from a crow and pen your darkest fears in the thickest blood... These will be short stories and microfiction (aka, short, short stories or flash fiction) on whatever dark theme you feel like hitting up: psychological horror, terror of the uncanny, classic gothic ghost story, Lovecraftian horror, good old-fashioned monster tale.... Make us shiver. WRITE IN THE DEAD OF WINTER.

Professor's Relic Revelation Haunted Career

Professor Florentino Amanghino, an Argentine scientist (1854 - 1911), was the founding father of South American paleontology and a driving force in the field world wide.

However, according to one source, a curious gift was once delivered to his office from the region of his country known as Patagonia that would baffle the Professor and cause him to question his scientific beliefs. Inside, according to an attached note, was a partial specimen--a piece of hide--of an animal the locals had killed but were unable to identify.

Shaken, Amanghino asked a colleague how old he estimated that bit of skin to be.  The man agreed that it couldn't have been more than a year old, given its fresh and pliable state. "What sort of hide is it," the man asked.

The professor paused, knowing his words wouldn't be believed, "It is from a giant sloth."

As expected, the Professor's colleague sputtered his incredulity at such a preposterous assertion. "Are you mad? The giant sloth died out 25
million years ago!"

Professor Amanghino remained convinced he had correctly identified the sample for the remainder of his career, begging the question: Do extinct creatures still roam the wild and remote environs of Patagonia?

The Phantom Monk of Sawtooth Mountain

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Holland decided to leave the hustle and bustle behind and vacation in the remote environs of Alaska at the foot of Sawtooth mountain one summer in the early part of the 20th century.

One evening toward the close of their trip the couple found themselves talking to a barkeep in their village about venturing through a pass in the mountains to explore a nearby valley. The couple was concerned about getting lost since they had heard there were snowstorms through there almost daily.

"Oh, you'll get lost all right," the bartender said. "But don't worry about it. You'll be okay."

The man's assurances didn't quite quell the couple's concerns, but since the following day began so beautifully, the pair decided to give it a go. They hitched up a team of dogs to their sled and proceeded into the mountains.

However, as they approached the pass, the once beautiful skies grew leaden, the wind picked up, and fat flakes of snow began whipping around them.

It wasn't long before visibility was nearly nothing and the couple grew nervous. Had this all been a terrible mistake? Should they turn around?

The two argued these points for several minutes when suddenly the wife called out.

"Look over there! There's a man out there in the storm."

The husband soon saw the figure, too. He seemed to be dressed as a monk. What's more they noted a dog trotting alongside.

The stranger in the snow motioned for the couple to follow him. Hesitant but desperate, the couple guided the dogs to follow the strange figure through the blizzard.

In a while they came through the valley and the skies cleared some. The wife leaped from the sled to thank the stranger, but he was gone.

Later, when the couple finally returned to the village, the once again met up with the barkeep.

"Well, you made it through, I see." The bartender commented.

"We almost didn't," the wife admitted. "If it hadn't been for..."

"A monk?" The bartender asked.

"Why, yes. How-how did you know?"

Apparently, the vanishing monk had been guiding travelers through the valley for almost 200 years.

Sawtooth Mountain lies roughly 60 miles northwest of Fairbanks, between the Yukon and Tanapa rivers and rises 4,639 feet. To the west of the mountain lies the interestingly named Blizzard Creek. Stibnite (or Antimonite) has been mined on the mountain, but no roads reach this remote region. Instead, travelers come up by river and then proceed on foot or by sled. If there was once a village in the vicinity of the mountain, it seems to be lost to history.

A popular radio program from the 1950s, Incredible, But True, might have been the genesis for the preceding legend. It seems every reference I can find to the Monk of the Sawtooth Mountains links itself to that show. If there is an actual local legend about a phantom monk, it's an obscure and likely moribund one. However, it is also likely that the talented and creative writers behind Incredible, But True conjured many of these otherworldly tales from their own imaginations.

The Phantom Monk of the Sawtooth Mountains

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Holland decided to leave the hustle and bustle behind and vacation in the remote environs of Alaska at the foot of the Sawtooth mountains one.

One evening the couple found themselves talking to a barkeep in their village about venturing through a pass in the mountains to explore a nearby valley. The couple was concerned about getting lost since they had heard there were snowstorms through there almost daily.

"Oh, you'll get lost all right," the bartender said. "But don't worry about it. You'll be okay."

The man's assurances didn't quite quell the couple's concerns, but since the following day began so beautifully, the pair decided to give it a go. They hitched up a team of dogs to their sled and proceeded into the mountains.

However, as they approached the pass, the once beautiful skies grew leaden, the wind picked up, and fat flakes of snow began whipping around them.

It wasn't long before visibility was nearly nothing and the couple grew nervous. Had this all been a terrible mistake? Should they turn around?

The two argued these points for several minutes when suddenly the wife called out.

"Look over there! There's a man out there in the storm."

The husband soon saw the figure, too. He seemed to be dressed as a monk. What's more they noted a dog trotting alongside.

The stranger in the snow motioned for the couple to follow him. Hesitant but desperate, the couple guided the dogs to follow the strange figure through the blizzard.

In a while they came through the valley and the skies cleared some. The wife leaped from the sled to thank the stranger, but he was gone.

Later, when the couple finally returned to the village, the once again met up with the barkeep.

"Well, you made it through, I see." The bartender commented.

"We almost didn't," the wife admitted. "If it hadn't been for..."

"A monk?" The bartender asked.

"Why, yes. How-how did you know?"

Apparently, the vanishing monk had been guiding travelers through the valley for almost 200 years.

A popular radio program from the 1950s, Incredible, But True, might have been the genesis for the preceding legend. It seems every reference I can find to the Monk of the Sawtooth Mountains links itself to that show. If there is an actual local legend about a phantom monk, it's an obscure and likely moribund one. However, it is also likely that the talented and creative writers behind Incredible, But True conjured many of these otherworldly tales from their own imaginations.

The Brit and the Beast

Captain Choate, Order of Distinguished Service, was stationed in Nigeria during World War I as Great Britain kept its grip on the former German colony.

It was in October 1918 that local tribal leaders told him about a man who transforms into a Hyena. The hunters knew this because they had followed the hyena prints after several attacks on both people and livestock. The men were amazed to see how the hyena prints transformed into human ones as they approached the next village.

Captain Choate joined the hunters as they tracked the creature to a moonlit clearing. Once spotted, the Captain took aim and fired. The men started as a fearful scream erupted from their quarry. Surely this must have been a mortal wound, they thought, and raced to the spot where the Hyena fell.

However, once they arrived they found no sign of the creature. To their discomfort, however, there was a bloodied human jaw on the ground--and a trail of blood leading in the direction of a nearby village. The Captain knew his aim was true. Now it was simply a matter of tracking the beast before it could attack another poor soul like this man whose jaw now sat in the bloody grass before them.

They followed the trail toward the next closest village, but it abruptly vanished. Exhausted by the hunt, the men went to the hut of an old man and asked if they could pass the night in his home and resume the search at first light. The man agreed and the hunting party settled in.

When the awoke in the morning, their host was gone. But as they stepped out into the early light, they spotted the old man coming down the path toward them, seemingly agitated. The old man told the hunters that he had gone to see his neighbor, another elder in the tribe, but found him dead. Someone had shot him in the face, shearing off his jaw bone in the process.

The Magnetic Cloud

Many know of the apocryphal--and likely wholly fabricated--tale of the "Philadelphia Experiment," which purportedly managed to not only visibly cloak an entire ship (the USS Eldridge), but send it from its dock in Philadelphia through time and space to another port in Norfolk. READ MORE HERE

But you might not know that Philadelphia harbor was also the scene of another bizarre anomaly almost forty years prior.

In July 1904, as the British ship Mohican steamed into port, a curious fog enveloped it that, according to Captain Urquhart (as quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer), was so dense one could scarcely see the deck of the ship. This strangely dense, gray fog also seemed to glow brighter as the minutes passed. Moreover, the ship's compass spun crazily, iron chains and implements became magnetized to the deck plates, and the hairs on their heads and bodies stuck out "like bristles on a pig."

Half an hour of this passed before the curious cloud lifted and drifted out to sea.

No explanations were brought forth and the mystery subsided into the depths of half-remembered lore.

The Draugr, A Nordic Zombie

DraugrThe draugr or draug is a sort of zombie in Norse mythology, an undead being that appears as a mouldering corpse and often guards the treasures buried in the mound graves of important figures. In this fashion, the draugr is like a haugbui, which is also a reanimated corpse that guards a grave, but one that cannot leave. Some draugar (plural) also exist to right wrongs done to them in life.

The most well-known of these draugar is Glámr whose ultimate defeat by the hero Grettir is recounted in the Icelandic Sagas.

Draugar are most often created by the failure to properly bury a corpse by heeding all prescribed rituals. As well, the dead might return in such a fashion if they were an especially mean-spirited or greedy individual. But, much like our post-modern zombie, a draugr can be created when a person becomes infected by one.

A draugr is already dead, but can die a second death if it successfully avenges itself, is destroyed, or it decomposes too much.

Draugar have superhuman strength and can change their size, growing big enough to crush a person with their mass. They also attack victims, by devouring their flesh, drinking their blood, or simply driving them insane.

One can know the location of a draugr's grave by the odd behavior of animals around a particular spot. It is also said that foxfire near a mound will indicate the presence of a draugr.

These walking dead also have some magical abilities (known as trollskap) not unlike those of witches, including shape-shifting, clairvoyance, and cursing. A draugr can also move through solid matter, swimming through stone as if it were water. This allows him access most anywhere (including to and from a grave) with impunity. Draugar can bring with them diseases to plague the living and can bring about darkness even during the day.

To stop a draugr from ever rising, iron scissors were placed on the chest of the deceased. Other rituals involved secreting twigs in various pockets and folds on their clothing. Needles might have been driven into their feet to "pin" them to the earth, or their feet might have been bound together to effect the same result. Another manner in which the good people of a village would attempt to dissuade such a revenant creature would be to make the trip from the home to the grave site as confusing as possible, so that the corpse would be unaware of exactly where it then laid. In a similar fashion, one that shows up in other areas as well, is the creation of a corpse door in the house, a specially built door that would be sealed after the corpse has left so that it cannot find its way back to the house.