Frank Tuttle's Blog, page 5

Frank's Guide to Sports

As many of you know, I'm a huge sports fan.Wait. It seems I misspelled several words in the sentence above, which should have read 'I'm huge, because I am inordinately fond of cheesecake. Sports? Why?'I live in a college town. Which means the place erupts in a frenzy of football madness each autumn. Game days are a non-stop traffic jam. Crowds roar. Fortunes are made or lost. Angry words are exchanged both online and in person. Fights break out when irate LSU fans learn they can't take their wife-goats into the nice restaurants on the Square.We stock up on groceries and stay home until the last arrest is made and the last camper pulls out for whatever they call home.I've never really understood the allure of sporting events. To me, sports is all that noisy bit that takes place behind the cheerleaders, which is the only aspect of any sport that makes any sense to me. And you sports that don't have cheerleaders? What's your problem, soccer?Here's the summation of every sport I've ever seen:A ball is chased, kicked, thrown, batted, rolled, dribbled, struck, or otherwise set in motion. This motion appears to anger one group and delight another. Whistles are blown. Can I go now?But Frank, someone says. What about the athleticism? What about competition? What about the spirit of friendly rivalry?"What?" I reply. "Sorry, didn't hear you, was watching the cheerleaders. Is this one of the sports at which hot dogs are served?"Maybe you're like me, and don't have much to contribute to the inevitable (and interminable) conversations about sports. As always, I'm here to help, with another Frank's Handy Guide. Frank's Handy Guide to the Life-Lessons Illustrated by Various Sports!1) NFL football. Provides extensive insight into that aspect of the legal system which deals with domestic violence, homicide, and animal abuse. 2) Pro baseball.  An invaluable primer to the fine arts of baccy-spittin' and poorly-concealed steroid use. Also perhaps the last holdout of socially acceptable venues in which males may adjust their privates in public and on camera.3) NBA basketball. Ready to riot? Win or lose, spill out of that stadium and overturn a few Kias, sports fans, because, um, friendly rivalry? Also a great place for tall people to find work since the invention of the ladder destroyed the top-shelf shopper assistance industry.4) Soccer. I'm sort of at a loss on this one. Is it really a sport? I suppose so, since there's a ball and a lot of vigorous running. People routinely get trampled to death at soccer matches. At first, I was sure these poor unfortunates were trampled while attempting to flee from the soul-crushing boredom of a soccer game, but I'm told this is not the case. I'm sure there's a life lesson in all that somewhere, but for the moment I'm going to stick with 'Soccer teaches us to avoid soccer games.' As far as I know, nobody was ever trampled to death by a horde of crazed badminton fans.5) Tennis. Tennis might not even belong on this list. I have a sneaking suspicion tennis is nothing more than a clever way to get young women to dress like cheerleaders and whack away at balls just so men can watch intently and not have to pretend they're concentrating on athleticism. 6) Hockey, Curling, Shot-Putting, Wrestling, Boxing, etc. There's only so much you can do regarding outdoor activities if you're stranded on some Godforsaken ice-floe of a continent. Shout out numbers at random, call them scores, and pretend two of your toes didn't just fall off, eh?


MEET RAHMAN TOWHIDUR, SCAMMER THIRD CLASS!
Facebook is many things to many people. To your grandparents, it's a place to swap baby pictures and distribute poorly-manipulated images of Obama as the AntiChrist. 
To scammers, it's a hunting ground. Last Friday, a Nigerian advance-fee fraud scammer picked me as his next victim, and initiated an IM conversation.
I'm not blurring out the scammer's name, which after all isn't really his name. Nor have I changed any of his words. If the scammer has a problem with this, he is welcome to A) bite me and B) bite me again. 
Now, a quick word about how the scam works. Rahman or whomever is running the thing contacts people at random with a bizarre song and dance about millions of dollars and a need of assistance to get it out of his country. The details vary, are NEVER spelled correctly, and don't make any difference anyway. 
All they want to do is trick the gullible into sending them money, via wire transfer or Western Union, as some ridiculous 'fee' which will, upon receipt, unlock untold millions of easy money.
It's a clumsy scam, but people get taken by these clowns every day. Which is why I try and waste the scammer's time whenever I can.
Below is the IM conversation. I emailed the 'banker,' but haven't received a response yet. If I get one I'll post it here next week.
Enjoy this tragic tale of 'euphoric' lung cancer, and my Pastafarian blessings upon the scammer!



Yeah, I was getting a little testy by the end. Us Pastafarian ministers aren't known for our patience. 
If you'd like to see even more scam-a-licious hijinks, I suggest you check out 'Scamorama!' Link is below...
Click here to visit Scamorama!

Book Away

At long last, a new Markhat and Darla book is out and away!Way Out West is now with the publisher, under consideration. So while I may indeed be popping the champagne cork early (there's no guarantee Way Out West will be bought), just finishing and submitting a new book is a minor victory in itself. 2015 has been a rough year for writing. But I got one book out, with time enough to start another, and I'm proud of that. My next project will of course be the continuation of Mug and Meralda's adventures. If you read All the Turns of Light, you might remember them spotting something very strange in the sky, high above the Great Sea. Will that play a role in the new book, which is entitled Every Wind of Change in my files?Could be. You'll just have to wait and see!On a Serious NoteMy original plan for today was to include a section about how writers celebrate sending off a new book. But in light of all that's happened, it came off as being in poor taste.Maybe later. I'm not going to post any images of the Eiffel Tower, or pontificate about the need for peace. In fact, I'm not going to say anything at all. I'll let the great Charlie Chaplin do the talking, in this remarkable clip from 1940's The Great Dictator. If you've never seen this speech, I humbly suggest you take a couple of minutes and listen. It was true then, and true now.

Take care, people.

Way Out West

At long last, the new Markhat book, Way Out West, is done!

I finished the first draft late in the afternoon yesterday, on Halloween. That's the first time I've ever finished a book on Halloween. As with all writers, I'm appallingly superstitious at heart, so I'll go ahead and start believing this event is a mystical portend of things to come (i.e., bestseller-dom, movie deals, merchandise ties-ins, maybe even a new soldering iron). 

Of course finishing a book and selling a book are two entirely different events.

Some may say selling a new installment in an established series is easy. Some might also say sticking one's face in a fan is a good idea, and there's probably somebody uploading that very video to YouTube as you read this.

My point is that, in publishing, there are no sure things.

Now, that said, it is true that Way Out West won't face the same hurdles as the first book in the series did. Back then, Markhat was just another name in the slush pile, competing with a thousand other would-be books for a contract. 

It's a nerve-wracking experience, the waiting. Are they laughing at me? Taking turns burning manuscript pages as they read aloud from the synopsis? Is my name even now being circulated on secret publishing forums, as Doofus of the Day?

Why yes, I am under the scrutiny of a mental health care provider. Funny you should ask. But I digress.

But back in 2008, Samhain Publishing took a chance on Dead Man's Rain, the first Markhat title. That was also my initial introduction to a book publishing firm.


I'd worked with magazines before -- Weird Tales, for one. That's fun too, but it's a different experience than having an actual publisher and putting out book-length titles.

For instance, you get an editor. More than one editor, actually, but you'll work primarily with one editor, who turns a practiced eye upon your book and suggests changes that will result in a stronger final product.

This is where a lot of new authors short-circuit and send their own careers up in flames. How dare anyone presume to judge my sacred prose, these authors cry, twisting their berets in fury. How dare she!

Well, bub, she dares, and for good reason.  I can say with good authority that without my Samhain editors in the mix, the Markhat Files series wouldn't be as good as it is (that's not a brag; note I offered no indicator of how relatively good the series actually is. That's not for me to say. I just write them. Readers decide if the books have any merit).

Holly, my current editor at Samhain, spots things I miss. Suggests things that would improve a scene. Is willing to wave the Wand of Irrevocable Deletion over entire passages that could better be summed up with the sentence 'I ran.' 

That's what a good editor does. That's a service I get for free by going through a publisher.

Cover art design and execution? Also provided free. Conversion to different formats? Marketing? Placement in various online and physical stores?

I never lift a finger, and I certainly don't write any checks.

All that is why I'll be submitting Way Out West to Samhain. Because it benefits us both, as long as the books sell. 

Note that I'm not slamming self-publishing here. I do that as well -- All the Paths of Shadow and All the Turns of Light are books I put out. 

I decided to try self-publishing the Paths series when the original publisher of Paths of Shadow left the business.  I knew Samhain didn't handle YA-flavored light fantasy, so I thought why not try?

That's been a good decision. The books are still selling well. In fact, now that Way Out West is done, I'll start back on the 3rd Mug and Meralda book.

I'll probably hire my own cover artist and editing and self publish this next Meralda title too, unless I find a publisher willing to take the first two books on as well.  

I've seen a lot of ads for how-to books and courses which claim 'Self-publishing is EASY! Publish your book with 3 quick clicks!' and the like.

All of that is clickbait nonsense. If you're going to do it right, self-publishing is a costly, time-consuming process that frankly is the authorial equivalent of sucking down a big tall glass of metal shavings. 

Not saying it cannot or should not be done -- I'm just saying set aside plenty of time for the act and the aftermath, because this isn't a pleasant walk in the park.

If you're curious about my process, here's what comes next for Way Out West. I'll spend a week or two doing an edit pass of my own. Once that's done, a copy or two will go out to my army of fearless beta readers. At that point, I will put the book aside, and start on the new Meralda book (working title is Every Wind of Change).

When the betas have finished, I'll read their reports, make a final edit pass based on that, and only then will the book go to Samhain, if I judge it to be finished.

I will reveal that the next Markhat adventure will be titled Bad Moon Rising. The significance of that title will be made apparent in the course of Way Out West. 

And that's all I say about that.

PS: Early in the blog, I suggested someone was probably posting a face-in-the-fan video to YouTube as you read my blog. Well, after finishing this entry, I thought 'Surely no one would actually do that,' so I checked YouTube just to see.

Sigh. Yes, there are face in the fan videos. This one has four million views. 

I'll go back to writing now.

Things That Go Bump #4

Bill O'Neil
George MeekMeet Bill O'Neil and George Meek.

These gentlemen are one of two things. They are either visionaries and pioneers, or a pair of grinning scamps who pulled off one of the most complicated pranks in paranormal research history.

Together, they built and operated an enormous machine they called the Spiricom, which was said to allow clear, utterly unambiguous communication with at least one deceased gentleman known as 'Doc Mueller.'

You can hear the tapes. See the diagrams. But before we get into all that, a bit of background.

The year is 1979. Disco is on its last pair of wide-bottomed trousers. The acronym 'EVP' is barely know to anyone outside of hard-core paranormal researchers. I am sporting a truly unfortunate Beatles bowl-cut. 

Meanwhile, down in his basement, Bill O'Neil is using the so-called 'Spiricom' to speak to the dead.

Of course, he's not the only person to have made this claim. But he is one of the few who made high-quality recordings of his conversations. His methods were also wildly diverged from the usual Ouija-board and seance-room approaches usually taken. 

No, the Spiricom was a nuts-and-bolts machine. 

In a nutshell, here's how O'Neil and Meek claimed the Spiricom worked:

1) They built a tone generator. This tone generator combined 13 distinct audio tones, each lying within the vocal range of the average human male (from about 300 to 3400 Hz). Nothing special here, except in 1979 you couldn't simply fire up a computer to do this without building a specialized device.

2) They hooked the tone generator to a low-powered radio transmitter. Their transmitter spewed out the audio tone on a radio frequency of around 30 MHz. Is there anything magical or special about 30 MHz? Nope. 

3) They built a receiver, which received their 30 MHz tonal transmissions.  They set up a mic and a recorder and recorded the sounds from the receiver as well as the operator's voice.

Pretty simple, really. You've got a transmitter spewing out a steady tone, which is a combination of all the tones used by human males (why not include women? Sign of the times, I suppose). 

And then you've got a receiver picking up these tones, and a recorder taking it all down. 

According to Meeks and O'Neil, something happened between steps 2 and 3. For communication to have occurred, a group of entities based somewhere else would have to have received this tone transmission, modulated the steady tone into a rather robotic-sounding voice, and then transmitted this modulated version of the signal back to O'Neil's receiver. 

Keep in mind nothing O'Neil said was actually transmitted. The Spiricom receiver sent out nothing but the tone. So for the ghosts to know what O'Neil was saying, they had to be there in the room listening to him. 

Yeah. So you've got spirits who A) know somehow when the Spiricom transmitter is active, and B) can also be present in the same room to hear what the operator is saying. 

But forget that for a moment. Let us hypothesize that there are ghosts on the Other Side who know quite a bit about electronic engineering. That's not so far-fetched, really. 

Here's where things get weird.

If you believe Mr. O'Neil and Mr. Meeks, after a few months of working with the Spiricom device, voices began to emerge from the tone. Clear voices. Distinct voices. 

Voices that engaged in perfectly intelligent conversations with O'Neil.

Here's an example. The robotic voice is purported to be that of 'Doc Mueller,' a dead engineer who is speaking to O'Neil from the Other Side. There's nothing spooky or scary here -- forget the context for a minute, and it's just two old friends tinkering around in their garage.

Oh, Those Cigarettes

The 'Doc' is helping to refine the transmission, which is why he repeats 'Mary had a little lamb.' 

This (and the other recordings of O'Neil) is the the only piece of sustained conversational EVP I've ever heard. If it is real -- and that's a big if -- it has profound implications for science, philosophy, everything.

Carrots and Cabbages

I mean listen to the clip above. They're talking carrots and cabbages. Gardening. The weather.

This isn't pareidolia.   It isn't RF crosstalk. It may be faked, but it bloody well isn't an accident of noise.

There are quite a few recordings you can listen to.

Click http://www.worlditc.org/k_06_spiricom.htm  for links.

By now, you may be wondering why, if the Spiricom device worked so well, that you've (probably) never heard of it.

Good question. O'Neil and Meek didn't hide the plans. In fact, they encouraged others to build their own machine and replicate their results.

A few people did so.

All they got, I'm afraid, was a steady tone from the receiver. No Doc Mueller.  No friendly ghosts with a bent for electrical engineering.

Which leaves us to consider fraud.

I understand scams and how they work. When conducted on any scale, fraud is designed to relieve fools from their money.

If Spiricom was indeed a fraud, it was spectacular only in its ineptitude. Neither O'Neil nor Meek got rich selling schematics. They didn't do the talk-show circuit. They both died quietly, in relative obscurity, and the without the solace of heaps of cash.

Believers will assert that O'Neil made the Spiricom work because he was, unknown even to himself, a gifted medium, who probably could have achieved the same results with a few candles and a darkened room.

Me?

Heck if I know.  I just build things. I do find it amusing to think that, if the story is true, the first thing a living engineer and a dead engineer do upon establishing contact across the Veil is to immediately start fiddling with the electronics. They didn't talk philosophy or discuss the true nature of uber-reality. 

No, they started improving the quality of the audio signal.

Is that plausible? Believable?

Again, I don't know.

But what I do know is that technology has marched on since the Days of Disco.

Tone generators? No circuits needed. Just fire up some cheap (or even free) audio software and build your own Spiricom tone. Save it as an audio file. Whew, that took a whole three minutes.

The transmitter?

Almost as easy. 

You can grab a nifty FM transmitter from Ramsey Electronics for around 40 bucks. Yeah, you'll need to build it, but that's easily done in an afternoon. As far as having a receiver and a recorder handy, well, that's child's play.

I'll have my own Ramsey transmitter soon. 

But there's no need to wait to run a few very simple tests. You can make a crude but operable RF transmitter with two 49 cent transistors, a capacitor, and a few other small parts in about ten minutes. I have several receivers handy.

And so I give you, gentle readers, my own Saturday afternoon version of a Spiricom device, shown below!




Yes, I know my workbench needs to be re-surfaced. It's a workbench. Small explosions are not unheard of.

But there it is -- a vastly oversimplified AM oscillator.

Does it work?

Yes, in that is spews out a tone (around 1000 Hz) on a radio frequency that spreads across the entire AM transmission band. Good thing I don't have close neighbors, even though the effective range is only a few yards. 


And here is one of my two receivers, which you may recognize as the Tesla crystal radio I built back in 2014.



All the aspects of the original Spiricom device are here. I generate a tone. I blast it out into space as a radio signal. I then receive the tone and record both the tone and my voice. 

Easy-peasy.


Have a listen!



The recording above was made using my crude transmitter (that's the circuit on the console) and my crystal radio (the thing with the weird antennas). 

I recorded fifteen minutes of audio with this. Regrettably, Doc Mueller was a no-show.

Yes, there were a lot of faint voices in the background (and some not so faint blasts too). But those are merely stray radio broadcasts. What I was listening for were voices composed of the tone itself.

I got none. Which is hardly a surprise; Meeks and O'Neil didn't get anything at first either.


I decided to try a commercial receiver, something with a far more selective tuner than the one on the Tesla crystal radio. So I fired up my trusty  Realistic TM-102 AM/FM receiver (right out of 1983) and set it to a quiet spot low in the AM band for another session. Here's a sample of that.



Again, nothing but tone.

You'll hear more here about the Spiricom in the weeks and months to come. In the meantime, I invite you to research the subject further, including comments by the detractors. 

Last week I mentioned Mama Hog might be reading Poe's THE RAVEN in this week's blog.

I really should think these things through before I start shooting my mouth off. Yes, such a thing is possible. But to make it sound good is going to take a lot of time, and frankly that's time better spent finishing the new book.


Instead, I leave you with a truly excellent rendition of THE RAVEN, read by none other than Christopher Lee. I invite you to turn down the lights and turn up the volume, because this is probably the best version of THE RAVEN available anywhere.



Then follow up by enjoying The Alan Parson Project's equally haunting musical rendition, from their debut album TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION.



Night night, folks!

Things That Go Bump #3

Welcome to this, my third installment of the Things That Go Bump series!For today's blog, I visited two cemeteries. I took my camera, my Zoom H1, and the new Velleman Super Ear.I paid a visit to Oxford's own literary superstar, novelist William Faulkner. His grave is pictured above; note my mics on his markers, and the airline bottle of Jack Daniels left as a gift by one of his many admirers. Sulking perhaps at the small volume of whiskey contained in the bottle, The Faulkners were silent during this session.But they were the only residents being quiet. During my ten minute stay there, I recorded a dozen snippets of voices, screams, yells, thuds, bangs, howls, and, quite possibly, an entire operatic performance of 'Fiddler on the Roof.'Hey, I don't write private eye fiction without having learned a thing or two. I rendered myself in film noir black and white. pushed my fedora down at a jaunty angle, and I walked the mean streets of Oxford until I discovered the source of these hellish vocalizations.A bunch of kids were beating the ever-loving crap out of each other with those flexible foam pool noodle things not a block from the gravesite.So I've tossed out the entire Faulkner EVP session. A choir of poltergeists could have covered Led Zepplin's second album two feet from my microphones, and they'd still have been drowned out by little Sally's furious pummeling of that awful Randall kid from two houses down.But fear not, gentle readers, because I have something amazing to offer despite this.My next visit, to the Civil War cemetery on the University of Mississippi campus, was anything but mundane.

The University of Mississippi Civil War CemeteryTucked away on the edge of campus, the Confederate Soldiers Cemetery occupies a small hill and is bordered by a waist-high brick wall.You can read the official description on the marker.What the marker doesn't mention is a bit of campus lore the campus had no doubt rather forget.According to the story, the University decided to spruce up the graveyard sometime back in the 1950s. A truck was dispatched, and workers were instructed to carefully load the grave markers onto the truck, so that they could be taken away to be cleaned.A nice gesture. The work was completed. The freshly cleaned markers were loaded back onto the truck, and the truck returned to the cemetery, and it was only then that the awful truth became apparent.No map or plan of the location of the graves had been prepared. There was no way to tell which markers went where.I can only assume that the single mass marker which now stands at the top of the lonely hill was quickly erected, probably in the dead of night. Nevertheless, I entered the graveyard, armed with my recorders and cameras.

 I was there for approximately 17 minutes.During my stay, I captured two strange audio instances, and one photographic one.Let's begin with the photo.I take a lot of photos during an EVP session. Hundreds of them. It's a digital camera, why not? And most of the images -- the vast majority of them -- are just pictures. Nothing unusual at all about them.But take a look at the image below.
Dead center is an odd purple aberration that didn't show before or after. Lens flare? Not so sure. If there was anything brightly reflective in the foreground, I'd attribute the haze to that. But there isn't.Aside from the central marker itself, that is. I don't see anything bright on it. And doesn't the general outline of the blur suggest an oblong figure in front of the camera? Man-shaped, sort of, in a gauzy, insubstantial, Hollywood spectre sort of way?I'm not calling this a ghost. I'm not calling it anything. It's just odd. I mentioned two pieces of audio.At about 16 minutes and 45 seconds into the main session, as captured by the Zoom, I thought I had a voice.I really did. I'm walking, you see. I say 'I'm halfway to the gate,' as I exhort anyone who wishes to speak to do so, before I leave. A few seconds pass. I reach the gate, and say 'All right.'My Zoom seemed to capture a single word in that brief silence.In preparing it for presentation to the blog, I removed some of the noise. I isolated the sound. Amplified it. Looped it.Thankfully, I also identified it.No ghost here.I have new sneakers, you see. Sketchers. They have these annoying little suction cups on the soles. When I walk on a tile floor, I sound like an octopus engaged in frenzied tap dancing.But of course the cemetery is simply mowed ground. My shoes were silent on that -- until I stepped on one of the half-hidden flagstones that make up the path from the gate to the central marker.SQUNK.And that's the sound I captured. I won't post it.But what I will post is nothing short of amazing.The Ghost On the WallAt about 5 minutes and 30 seconds, my Velleman was resting on the wall that surrounds the cemetery. So was my Zoom.So was I.Let me preface this by saying I was absolutely alone. No one was in sight. I heard nothing at the time of the recording. No car was driving past. No kids were engaged in gleeful assault with battery.I was alone.Or was I?As I rested in the shade, I remarked that the cemetery was 'very peaceful.' There is a silence. I then comment that the cemetery is probably the only speck of real estate safe from development, because of the bodies.I even took this picture.

What the Velleman captured in the space of my comments came as quite a shock to me.I looped the voice for clarity. What it says seems obvious to me. But you be the judge.
You don't even need headphones for this one.Again, let me make it plain that I was alone. No women were present. No one was.So what did I capture?Was it wind noise, combined with pareidolia? I don't think so. The character of the voice doesn't sound like anything else in the entire recording.A stray voice?If so, why didn't the Zoom capture it? I checked the same time, listened to the space between the same comments. Look at the picture. They're maybe nine inches apart. One caught a female voice. The other caught nothing.And why didn't I hear it, if it was merely a voice?Explanations? I have none. Voices don't simply emerge from thin air, except when they do. I suspect -- and I'm only thinking out loud here, folks -- that so-called EVPs originate from very small spaces located close to the recording microphone. I mean small. Microscopic, even.I can think of no other set of circumstances that would explain why two recorders in close proximity might result in a recording by one device and failure to record by the other. This point-source supposition might also explain why I never hear the sounds my devices capture.It doesn't explain the nature of the sounds, of course, but there wasn't enough booze in Faulkner's bottle to even begin to tackle that question.So did I manage to record some invisible entity saying the words 'a ghost?'I don't know. I have the recording. That's really all I can state for sure -- that my device captured these sounds.I hate to leave you with more questions that answers, but for now, I have no choice.A Gift For YouFinally, gentle readers, I leave you with a spooky gift, suitable for hanging on your walls.

I enjoy art. I have a twisted sense of humor. Some of the things hanging on my walls are not quite what they seem, at first glance.This diploma is an example. Ever wanted to be a certified Evil Overlord, with the papers to prove it? Well, download the form above and fill in your name and your desired degree. Hang it on your office wall. See how long it takes anyone to notice.Yeah, I made this. All the Latin translates to 'Evil is Better,' 'No Mercy,'  and 'No Fear.' My degree is in Applied Hostile Geometries. The images are pulled from public domain woodcuts.If you want me to add your name and degree in fancy text, email me and let me know. Looks pretty good, even in a cheap Walmart frame. Show those fancy-pants ingrates at work what a REAL degree looks like!Things to ComeNext week, I add wind screens to the Velleman, and plan a daring twilight EVP expedition!So stay tuned, and stay safe!NOTE:Links to the full Civil War EVP sessions are below, in case you are eager to torture your ears with my accent and running commentary.

Things That Go Bump #2

Broken face, Tula cemetery.In this second October installment of my Things That Go Bump series,  we're going to focus on EVPs.

EVP is an acronym for Electronic Voice Phenomena. I'm sure you're familiar with EVPs -- every ghost hunting show and quite a few movies feature them now, usually billed as 'voices of the dead.'

I'm not suggesting such a thing. I have no idea what agency is behind the voices. In fact, when I first heard of EVPs several years ago, I laughed at the whole concept.

I laughed so much, in fact, I got a mic of my own, and I took it to a graveyard, and I walked around talking and listening. My intention was to fail to record anything, and then mock the very notion of EVPs on my blog.

But things didn't happen as I planned. I actually caught an EVP my first time out. I've recorded a number of them since.

So while I don't claim to know by what means these voices wind up on recordings, I do know the phenomena is real.

And, oddly enough, it happens to me most often in cemeteries. I can set up my mics in the backyard or the warehouse or anywhere else, and get nothing.

But head into a boneyard, and out come the voices.

Which brings us to today.

Yesterday, October the 10th, I ventured back to the tiny cemetery in equally tiny Tula, Mississippi. Is this cemetery haunted?

Nope. Haven't heard a single story.

Did I go in the dead of night?

Not just 'no' but heck no. I don't avoid rural graveyards after dark out of some fear of ghosts. I doubt they'd hurt you, even if they do exist.

But copperhead rattlesnakes certainly do, and will. Ditto for wild hogs and drunk teenagers and I can think of no better way to get off to a bad start with local law enforcement than for someone to call the sheriff on me in a cemetery in the middle of the night.

So I do day investigations. And yesterday's was certainly fruitful.

In addition to my trusty Zoom H1 field microphone, I employed a device I built that same Saturday morning. It's a Velleman Super Ear mic, which provides about 50 times the normal amplification and a stereo pickup.

After the EVPs, I'll go into the Super Ear build, but let's get right to the spooky stuff.

Manning -- or, I suppose, woman-ing -- the Velleman was Karen, accompanied by Executive Investigator dog Max.



They headed back into the old, overgrown part of the cemetery, while I took the Zoom and went in the opposite direction, to eliminate crosstalk.

About nine minutes in to the session, Karen thinks she hears a faint voice or voices. She's heard this before there, a sort of chant, and she comments upon it.

The mic picks up nothing then. But soon after that, it captured what sounds like a single word. I can't make it out. Maybe you can. The EVP is below, in the form of a YouTube video.


Here's the same word, with noise reduction in place.


That's a single word. Strange, but not really spooky.

What follows is probably the spookiest EVP we've ever recorded. It's nothing but whispering. This was about 4 and a half minutes into the full session.  She's just walking with Max, hasn't said anything in a few moments, when out of nowhere came this:


The next clip is from about 10 minutes and 30 seconds in. Karen hears something odd, and says 'Not sure of the recorder picked that up, but it was a very weird sound.' 30 seconds later, this was captured. A single word, maybe 'what?'


Finally, we have this. You may need headphones for this one, it's extremely faint. Around the 14 minute mark, Karen notes many of the graves lack markers, and comments that 'gone but not forgotten' sadly doesn't apply to those poor souls. About 5 seconds after she speaks, there is a faint murmuring -- but again, you may need headphones for this one.



Now let's switch to the things the Zoom H1 caught. It won't take long, because there are only two. 
The first is a single word. I laid the mic down on a sandstone marker, stepped back, and asked if anyone had anything to say. I then snapped the following picture.


It's a child's grave, from around 1850. I heard nothing, and after a moment I moved on.
But here's what the mic captured:

What word is that?
No idea. I can only say I didn't hear it while I was standing there.
Finally, I give you this. It too is faint, and headphones are recommended. I took a photo of another child's grave, commented that the poor little guy only lived a year, and walked away. This is what the mic caught (again, very faint).



With phones, it sounds as if someone near the recording device recently dined at Taco Bell. I can assure you the source of the mysterious raspberry was not me, and I don't think it was Max, either. 
What were these sounds? Why were they captured on recording devices, but not heard by the persons operating the devices? Why (in my experience at least) are they only captured in cemeteries?
Heck if I know. 
THE VELLEMAN SUPER EARSecond only to screwing around on Facebook, building gadgets is my favored way to avoid real work (i.e., writing). So I build a lot of things, and most of today's EVPs were captured by my newest DIY gadget, the Velleman Super Ear mic.


The astute observer may notice the tell-tales signs of duct tape and Velcro. Why?
Because I'm a fantasy author whose name, when spoken, is almost always followed by the word 'Who?' 
So you do the best you can with what you have.
The heart of the Super Ear is a simple mic-and-amp circuit, available anywhere for less than ten bucks. It comes unassembled, so you'll have to do your own soldering and cutting.
What you get is a stereo mic with a built-in IC amplifier. The gain is set to about 50, which makes it extremely sensitive. The output jack can feed a pair of headphones or, in my case, a simple digital recorder.
Let's start with the kit, which looks like this:


You will need a soldering iron, and you'll need to know how to use it. The parts are tiny and the circuit board to which they must be soldered contains delicate copper tracings that are easy to short out.
I have a big magnifying glass on a flexible arm over my work bench. Otherwise I couldn't see anything.


So you follow the instructions, put resistors and capacitors and potentiometers and all the rest as indicated. 


Then you solder and trim the ends. 


After an hour or so of work, you have this!


It needed a case of some sort. I didn't have a box to fit, but I did have an old cordless soldering iron, duct tape, a broken camera mini-tripod, and some Velcro. I opted to use my Olympus digital audio recorder as the output, and viola, the Super Ear was born!


That's the device that recorded most of the EVPs above. Ten bucks, some batteries, a few junk odds and ends.
Mad science can be fun!
WRITING NEWSGood news, folks! The new Markhat book is all but done. I mean 95%, and it's a good one, too.
I'll probably be posting IT IS FINISHED in next Sunday's blog.
I hope you enjoyed this foray into the unknown! 
See you next week!

Things That Go Bump #1

It's October, my favorite month.  Because October is the only month that culminates in Halloween. And Halloween is the only holiday that celebrates the spooky, the scary, and the mysterious!

In keeping with the spirit of the season, each blog entry this month we'll dig up a little cemetery soil to expose something buried in the shallow grave of rationality.

What better place to start digging, than beneath the headstone marked 'ghosts?'

Ghost stories are told within nearly all human cultures, and have been told throughout all the history we've been able to cobble together. Some ghosts are vengeful, some are sad, some are able to see the future, or dabble in the affairs of the living.

According to the stories, that is. Science has yet to recognize anything even remotely resembling proof that dead people go on as bodiless spirits.

But, for the purpose of discussion, let's say ghosts exist. It's October. Take the plunge. Ghosts are real. Fine.

What the heck are they?

You'll get a lot of replies to this question. Ghosts are spirits, of course. Beings composed of pure energy. Ghosts are the embodiment of our immortal souls. Ghosts are ectoplasmic remnants of our consciousness.

Today I'd like to suggest a different, lesser known theory for  the actual mechanism behind most so-called 'hauntings.'

What if the ghosts are, in fact, us?

More specifically, what if ghosts are the actualized, mobile results of our own imaginations?

I speaking about tulpas. A tulpa is said to be an entity created by the act of willful concentration and meditation of one or more people. If the people are determined and devoted to the process, believers (and this is an ancient belief) claim a tulpa can do all the things we attribute to ghosts, and more.

Case in point: the so-called Philip Experiments, conducted by a group of Canadian psychical researchers in the 1970s.

You can read about the sessions here or here. Or I'll summarize things for you. A group of researchers decided they would create a ghost. They named him Philip and gave him a detailed but entirely fictional history. They drew sketches of his likeness.

They got together and talked about Philip and thought about Philip and generally focused on Philip, even though everyone in the group was quite well aware there was not, nor had there ever been, any such person.

That's important. Because they weren't trying to contact the spirit of a deceased person.

Instead, the experiment was designed to test a theory that stated the expectation of psychic phenomena -- in this case, ghostly appearances -- was enough to actually trigger the phenomena.

Once Philip was well-known to the group, they began to engage in the methods employed by spiritualists and mediums of the last century. They sat in darkened rooms and urged 'Philip' to come forth.

If you believe the group and witnesses to the occurrences, Philip soon began to appear, even though he was imaginary.

The group reported knocks and movements and all the usual phenomena associated with seance-style apparitions.

There's even a video of a Philip session, captured by a Canadian TV show. The video shows table-tipping -- but you can see it for yourself, I've pasted it below. LATE NOTE: The video is replay-restricted, which means it won't open in the window on this page. Instead, click on the words CLICK HERE TO WATCH THIS ON YOUTUBE and it will take you there and you can watch. Sorry, that's the way they posted it.


The video is either proof of the power of simple imagination, or a run-of-the-mill table tipping hoax.

Look, making a table tip via trickery is easy. Making it float isn't much more difficult. We've all seen stage magicians do far more impressive feats, and no one is suggesting anything paranormal was involved.

But what if 'Philip' was the actual agency behind the movement in that video?

Well, that means the physical world is subject to the influence of directed mental effort.

It might also mean that many of what we call 'ghosts' and 'hauntings' are nothing more than mental residue, set free to wander.

Is that really so far-fetched?  Take any location with a reputation for being haunted. People talk about what they've seen and heard. They speculate. They spend a lot of time wondering if they are alone. they jump at shadows and they tell their friends and pretty soon the whole place is awash in the very same kind of spooky energy used to raise up Philip, the imaginary ghost.

Which would make Philip a tulpa. And if my assertion is true, it would mean we are surrounded by tulpas, who make stairs creak and pop out of doorways and push glasses off of counters because that's just what we expect them to do.

Do I believe this?

Yes. No. Maybe. But it's fun to think about.

There is a downside to this school of thought, though. Let's say you are afraid of monsters in your closet, or under the bed.

If that's true, every time you think about them, they get a little closer to solidifying. A tiny step nearer to the door that opens into our reality.

But I'm sure that's all nonsense.

Sleep tight, my fiends.

What was that noise?

Ask Bender!

In case you don't recognize him, that's Bender, the chain-smoking felonious robot from the brilliant animated series 'Futurama.'

What is a 52-year-old man doing with a Bender (in)action figure?

Bender often acts my writing muse. See, this is no ordinary Bender figure. He talks.

And, being Bender, he gets right to the point.

For instance, when today when I sat down to write, I was feeling tired and overwhelmed and frankly all I really wanted to do was fire up The Witcher and take on a side quest or two.

Instead, I asked Bender for advice, and he imparted the following words of patient wisdom:


It's a short video, but one replete with ancient wisdom.

It's also the perfect advice for me today -- shut up and get busy.

Thanks, Bender!

OTHER NEWSThe Markhat Files now has its own Facebook page!

Head on over and ask Markhat, Mama Hog, or Darla a question. I'll also be posting new about the new book's progress there.

Here's the link:

https://www.facebook.com/themarkhatfiles

I've also updated the Paths of Shadow Facebook page. The link to that is below.

https://www.facebook.com/allthepathsofshadow

Stop by and say hello!

Bender is glaring at me. Time to get back to work. Take care all!

  

A Journey Nearly Complete

© Pintxoman | Dreamstime.com - Locomotive Photo

After many a false start, back-track, re-write, change of course, vow to give up writing forever, hasty return to writing, and severe headache, the new Markhat book is nearing completion!

I won't lie to you, gentle readers. 
2015 has been one of the hardest years of writing I've faced. 
By this time last year, I'd written and sold two complete novels. 
Now I'm just hoping to wrap this one up and get the new Mug and Meralda started before Halloween.
Why is that?
As with most wounds in this business, they've been self-inflicted. I think my biggest mistake was my blind determination to churn out a couple of thousand words a day. Yeah, okay, I did that -- but they weren't often the right words.
Which resulted in moments of gut-wrenching horror when I'd re-read things and realize the last 70 pages or so were, to be blunt, crap.
Badly-written? No, not necessarily. But even a bad story, told with eloquence and passion, is still a bad story.
Crap, in other words.
So I'd identify the spot there the narrative went off the rails, and I'd delete everything after that, and I'd start over.
I lost count of the number of times I did that with Way Out West. 
The only thing worse than gutting a book and going nearly back to page one, chapter one is NOT gutting the book and starting over. I am happy to say that, even though I was sorely tempted, I didn't shy away from taking a big sharp ax to my pile of words.
Not necessarily because I'm committed to my Art or any such lofty nonsense. No, I know my editors and my publisher and my readers, and they wouldn't be fooled for a moment by second-rate storytelling.
So, the good news -- the new Markhat book (Way Out West) is one I am truly proud of. I've done some new things, taken some risks. I think you'll see Markhat and Darla and their friends do some interesting and unexpected things, take off in directions no one saw coming. At least I hope so.
I am less than 20 thousand words from typing out the blessed phrase THE END. Now that I've gotten my head right and I'm working steadily, that won't take long at all.
How did I get my head right?
Back to basics. Fun, in other words -- forget strict adherence to some rigid outline. Forget walking the characters through intricate character and plot arcs that look good on paper but come off dry and rehearsed in the actual book. I think people read the Markhat books because Markhat makes them laugh, because he's a hero they want to cheer on, because he and Darla are a fun couple. 
So that's what I went back to. Sure, there's character development and arcs and subplots -- but there are also moments when Markhat spits right in Evil's eye with a wisecrack and a sneaky kick at its groin, while Darla prepares to shoot it right in its big red eyes.
So while I may not finish two full novels this year, I'll at least have written one good one and have a healthy start on a brand new Mug and Meralda that I hope is a worthy successor to that series. 
And maybe I learned something, too. Writing isn't typing. Word counts are important, yes, but 500 good words are preferable to 1500 mediocre ones all day every day.

When There Is No More Room in Central Casting, The Dead Will Be On At Eight

Zombies.

Undead Proctologist, coming this fall to TNT!They're everywhere, if by everywhere you mean movies and TV. And books. And graphic novels.

Zombies have shambled, crawled, and stumbled their way right into Western social consciousness, which has resulted in a spate of scholarly papers penned by bewildered sociologists trying to explain the popularity of walking corpses.

I can solve that mystery right here -- zombies are cheap for studios to create and easy for authors to write. Some latex, some make-up, ragged clothes and a limp -- presto, you're a zombie extra!

Writing zombies is even easier. Here's an example of nuanced zombie dialog:

"Urg," said the zombie. "Urg," replied the zombie horde.

You can put that on a keyboard macro and skip even typing out the whole word.

I'm kidding, of course. I've read some truly excellent zombie books -- World War Z by Max Brooks foremost among them. The book, not the movie, which should really have been titled World War Z The Movie Which Doesn't Make Any Effort Whatsoever to Even Hint at the Contents of the Book We Just Used the Title Ha Ha Ha.

I've read some pretty bad zombie books, too. Reading zombie books is how I spin my mind down and try to relax after working on my own books. Every now and then I'll just buy a slew of zombie ebooks and plow right in.

More than half of them are awful. The kind of awful that generates a stench you can almost smell rising from the display of your ereader. I try to keep going, no matter how bad things are, for at least a quarter of the book. Sometimes I can't even make that.

It appears a formula of sorts is being circulated among certain zombie authors.

HOW TO WRITE A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE THRILLER

1) Introduce Intrepid Hero, who is surrounded by a vast collection of firearms. Introduce each and every weapon, being careful to include Rates of Fire, Muzzle Velocity, and Favored Ammunition, you big sissy.

2) Add four to seven Secondary Characters. Sure, give them names, although descriptions such as 'Dies Screaming After Failing to Clean His Weapon' and 'Clueless Office Work Devoured Alive in Chapter 2' would probably work about as well.

3) Rescue the Love Interest without neglecting to maintain a count of rounds expended and providing graphic descriptions of exploding zombie craniums. Bonus points for spontaneous sex scene in gore-covered gun store.

4) Point Hero, Love Interest, and Band of Expendables toward some distant goal ("If we can make it to Disney's Epcot Center we can hide in that big dome thing!")

5) You need dramatic tension! Cue the Mindless Shambling Hordes. Pare down the Band of Expendables. Remember to include one coward who is bitten but conceals the injury until they turn and interrupt another sex scene in a gore-splattered gun shop.

6) Stop when the Hero and Love Interest, the only survivors of the journey, are thirty miles from Epcot. Because it's sequel time, baby!

I shouldn't laugh too hard. You see, once upon a time, long ago, I wrote my own zombie apocalypse thriller.

My hero was the owner of a gourmet foods grocery store which hadn't had its grand opening when the world falls apart. Marvin rides out the initial rising by locking himself in his half-stocked store. He isn't looted because his signage wasn't up yet and the windows were still covered, so he dines on expensive German sausages and a collection of middling good wines for three weeks.

No roaming the wastes with a steely glare and his trusty Mossberg G-17 tactical automatic shotgun with nuclear flash suppressor and custom 900 round magazine for my guy Marvin. Nope. In his defense, he does bravely manage to pair an inferior Cabernet with a suspect platter of imported Beluga caviar and live to tell the tale.

Marvin isn't alone, though. He lets an injured clerk from another store inside before anyone knew what being bitten means. When the clerk expires, Marvin locks the body in the store's office, and when the teenager reanimates, our hero keeps him there. Marvin even throws food into the office from time to time, and he talks to the zombie out of boredom. After weeks of that, the zombie starts throwing bits of food back to Marvin, and when the zombie does finally escape from the office, he dutifully goes about trying to stock the shelves, showing no interest in biting anyone.

Ultimately, Marvin and domesticated zombie 'Dude' set out across the wasteland -- but only after a fire destroys the strip mall.

Marvin and Dude. Part buddy movie, part road comedy, part apocalypse novel.

It really wasn't all that bad, looking back.

Maybe one day I'll open up a new Word file and start all over with it. I'll need a catchy title, something with the word 'dead' in it -- CLEAN-UP ON AISLE DEAD, maybe. Or DUDE OF THE DEAD. Perhaps even THE CHRONICLES OF MARVIN, BOOK 1: THE ROAD TO NEWARK.

I smell a TV tie-in!