Stephen Mark Rainey's Blog, page 64

Spooky and the Train

What a happy bunch! Old Rodan, Fishdownthestair, Diefenbaker, Old Rob
Today's geocaching venture took Team No Dead Weight to the American Tobacco Trail in Wake County to finish up the Train geoart we had started a couple of weeks ago (see " Fun in All Directions ," February 02/02/2020). Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), Robgso (a.k.a. Old Rob a.k.a. Bloody Rob a.k.a. Old Bloody Rob), and I headed out fairly early this a.m., hit the trail, and, after about a six-mile round trip, completed the geoart. The image is the shape of an oncoming train engine, although this one is surrounded by so many other caches, it's kind of difficult to discern its shape amid the jumble of cache icons on the Google maps overlay.

After that, we decided we needed some bison. Lots of it, with fries and Bloody Marys and nachos and hot jalapenos. We found all this and more at Ted's Montana Grill , a few miles north in Durham. It's been a favorite dining destination over the years, particularly when it's a group of us out geocaching. On our drive, though, we noticed a nearby cache called " SPOOKY 3 " ( GC194GB ) placed by Vortexecho (a.k.a. Christian), who is one of our favorite cache hiders because of the extreme nature of many of his hides. In this case, getting to the cache didn't require anything too extreme, although the host was a big, huge, Ent-like beast that stood out above all other trees in the forest. It's no great spoiler to reveal that the cache was hidden deep inside a cavernous opening in the tree's base. I made the venture into that dark chamber, which required some serious wriggling and stretching. Later, as we left the restaurant, dear friend Scott spoke up and said, "Hey, Mark, do you realize you look as though you might have been crawling around inside a big old tree?"

Well, the thought had occurred to me, though a little forewarning before heading into a nice restaurant might have been preferable. At least it was almost as dark in the restaurant as it was in the tree.

A fine day on the trail. Cache count after this trip stands at 11,736. That is all.

A Smashing Valentine's Day

After a mighty nice Valentine's Day dinner at The Third Bay in Martinsville, Ms. B. and I are stopped at a red light. Car comes from the left, makes a wide turn to the right, and — wham! Dumb-ass slams right into the front of my car. Crunches up the fender and headlight pretty good.

The fellow claimed his brakes locked up. However, he did appear impaired, and when the police arrived — happily, in short order — they arrested him immediately after running his credentials. He claimed he had insurance, but it appears to have expired. I expect he'll have a rough ride coming up, and it would seem deservedly so. Fortunately, Ms. B. and I are fine, but getting the car taken care of may take a while.

In any event, my takeaway from this is to never stop at a red light.

Now Brewing: Ameri-Scares New Hampshire: Ghosts From the Skies

INCIDENT AT EXETERAround 2:00 a.m. on September 3, 1965, a young man named Norman Muscarello was hitchhiking to his home in Exeter, New Hampshire from nearby Amesbury, Massachusetts. With so few cars traveling at that hour, he was forced to walk most of the way. About five miles south of Exeter, he saw strange, flashing lights appear in the sky. Naturally enough, he at first believed the lights must be from a plane or a helicopter. However, the airborne object made no sound, and its unusual, erratic movements resembled those of no conventional aircraft. When the object suddenly zoomed toward him, he became frightened and dove into a ditch to hide. Eventually, the brilliant object soared away to the east, toward Hampton. When a car finally came along, he flagged it down. The driver took him to the police station in Exeter, where Muscarello told the officer on duty, Reginald "Scratch" Toland, everything he had seen.
A short time earlier, a police officer named Eugene Bertrand had met a woman on the road who also claimed to have seen a mysterious, brilliant object in the sky. She told Bertand this UFO had followed her for several miles down a dark, deserted highway. Bertrand initially dismissed the woman's claim, but now intrigued, he decided to take young Muscarello back to the place where he claimed to have seen the flying object. Soon after the two men arrived, the lights reappeared, this time rising from behind a grove of nearby trees. It wasn't long before another police officer, David Hunt, appeared on the scene. As the three men watched, the object hovered, zoomed, and fluttered wildly in midair. All three witnesses agreed that the object's aerobatic maneuvers surpassed the capabilities of any conventional aircraft.

For several weeks afterward, numerous people in the area reported seeing strange lights in the sky. US Air Force investigators offered a variety of “natural” explanations for the UFOs. They suggested that witnesses might be seeing airplanes they simply didn’t recognize, or strangely magnified stars — due to unusual atmospheric conditions — or even lights from nearby Pease Air Force Base (now closed). However, in the face of so much evidence and no satisfactory answers, the Air Force filed the Exeter sightings under "Unexplained."

* * *
The passage above is a summation of an article titled "Outer Space Ghost Story" by John G. Fuller, which I discovered in the pages of Reader's Digest — the May 1966 issue — when I was about seven years old (right about the time the issue came out). My grandmother owned a huge collection of Reader's Digest issues, and I loved perusing them, especially the ones with stories about ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, and flying saucers. Needless to say, I have since acquired a copy of the issue in question, as well as several others of special interest. The image above illustrates the Reader's Digest story. Fuller's piece originally appeared in Look magazine, and his bestselling book, Incident at Exeter , is one of the most well-known chronicles of UFO phenomena.

When researching legends, folklore, and historical events from the various states for the Ameri-Scares series, the Exeter story is one that came foremost to mind. After revisiting the myriad UFO stories from that time period, I felt it would be the perfect background for the Ameri-Scares New Hampshire book. I recently turned in my latest entry — Ohio: Fear the Grassman — and I'll be moving on to the New Hampshire book in short order. I'm tentatively titling it New Hampshire: Ghosts From the Skies .

I think it will be a fun one — hopefully as much for readers as for me.

From Danville to Durham: Big Flood, Big Fun

I headed to Martinsville after work on Friday, spent a relaxing evening, and on Saturday morning, headed back to Greensboro by way of Danville, where I hoped to snag a relatively new geocache. As I was heading into Danville by way of US 58, I found the highway closed at a point very near the cache location. After some massive storming on Thursday, apparently the water levels in the area have risen well past flood stage. After a considerable detour, on my approach to the cache, down a long hill, I could see the Dan River rising higher and rushing faster than I had ever seen it. It's hard to make out the water level in the photo above, but the bridge on the left typically has about double the clearance above the river that you see here.

At ground zero, which is near a medical facility barely above the river level, I saw that the river had flooded a portion of the parking lot. This was more than 24 hours after the big storms, and the water had evidently receded somewhat. The hint for the cache indicated I needed to look for a small evergreen at the edge of the parking lot, and, to my chagrin, I could find no small evergreen at that location. What I did find was lots of cut evergreen branches littering the ground. Well... fart! I figured at this point, the cache must have vamoosed. However, about that time, a young lady who worked at the nearby facility, who was obviously on a smoke break, wandered over and asked if I was looking for "the little bottle somebody had placed out here." I said I was. She told me the evergreen tree had been cut down a few days earlier, but someone had moved the "bottle" to a different spot. She then pointed it out to me. Well, what do you know! Saved by a muggle! And I had been on the verge of writing off this side trip as a wasted venture. I explained geocaching to her, which she appeared to find amusing, and then off I went.

I took a different route back toward US 29 to head south to Greensboro. But... hang it all! Just shy of the exit to the highway, I come upon several feet of standing water and a bunch of cones blocking the road. From here, the only way to the highway was another lengthy detour. So, I decided to bite the bullet and see if I could make it through the water obstacle. Suffice it to say I did, though I ended up having to perform a slight — and fortunately simple — repair to the trusty Toyota once I got past this new, temporary lake.
From near the geocache site, the view looking east The view looking south The view looking west The obstacle I faced on the way to US 29. Made it!After successfully quitting Danville, I headed back home to Greensboro for a brief respite between travels. Then I picked up Kimberly at Casa di Brugger, and off we went, bound for Durham and long-overdue visit with my former next-door neighbors and fellow geocachers, TravelinFarmFam, a.k.a. Paul & Jamie. Since they left Greensboro, their family has grown by two much younger members. During the intervening years, I've seen Paul several times, when he's come to deal with issues at their house next door, but I haven't seen Jamie since they left here in 2013, and I had never met their wee little offspring before.

It would be safe to say it wasn't long after our arrival at Casa di FarmFam that the first bottle of wine popped its cork. Things haven't changed too much with Paul & Jamie because, way back when, they owned magical wine glasses. Those are glasses that magically refill themselves when one is looking away. Apparently, they still keep some of these marvelous items on hand because, even after drinking a prodigious amount, the wine level in my glass never really diminished. I must have looked away several times. Wonderful and strange, isn't it?

For dinner, Paul grilled some of his famous burgers — bison, this this go-round. Paul has always been an admirable grill master, and he once again proved his prowess, as did Jamie with some delicious roasted vegetables and risotto. And I must tell you that these fine youngsters up and introduced me to Paqui ghost pepper tortilla chips. For them, the Paqui chips were a little too hot to enjoy, and Ms. B. got the hiccups after trying her first sample. However, I found these to be the most perfect chips I've ever enjoyed, and I was happy to finish the bag for our friends, so that none of these incredible contents should go to waste. The Paqui people sponsor the " One Chip Challenge ," and I've actually craved the opportunity to try one of those hot-ass bastards. In fact, I just ordered a sampler package of Paqui chips from Amazon.com . Because, well, I kind of had to, didn't I? Anyhoo, we ended up watching some YouTube show with a hot, HOT chicken wing challenge , featuring numerous hot sauces, most of which I have already tried and survived. The viewing made for good fun. And it has done flung a cravin' on me... hence the ordering of the surpassing hot goodies mentioned above.

This morning, Jamie prepared a fabulous breakfast, and then the lot of us took off to do a little geocaching. Kind of like old times, except for the pair of wee young additions to the gang. We found a few caches, didn't find a couple, and then, with great sadness, we parted ways. About the time Ms. B. and I hit the highway, we decided we would need some lunch before we got home. So, we hauled ourselves over to Hillsborough BBQ Company , which has long been a favorite lunchtime destination, particularly for those of us out geocaching. And  — how fortuitous! — there is a relatively new geocache (Kiersten's Birthday Cache [GC8J2DD]) just across the road from the restaurant, which of course I have now claimed.

There's a new Ameri-Scares novel brewing upstairs, this one for the state of New Hampshire, chronicling a reprise of the famous UFO sightings near the town of Exeter in the year 1965. I first learned of these events when I was about six or seven years old, from an issue of Reader's Digest that my Grandparents owned (my grandmother collected years and years' worth of Reader's Digest issues). It was an article called " Outer Space Ghost Story ," by John G. Fuller, and it immediately caught my youthful attention. A while back, on eBay , I found that particular issue plus a couple of others, which featured articles on the Loch Ness Monster and the Haunting of the George & Dragon Inn in England. So, of course, I now have copies of my own. "Incident at Exeter" seemed a perfect subject for a new Ameri-Scares novel, so I may take some of the brainstorming I've already done and begin composing an outline this evening.

So, this weekend saw me relaxing in the extreme to being remarkably productive. But it's about zoomed past now, and tomorrow it'll be back to the office and a full week of work. I so need a break from the break.

Till tomorrow and beyond.

Color Out of Space

As a wee young'un, I was an avid reader, especially of scary literature, but until I went off to college, I had never read H.P. Lovecraft's work. And what a transformative experience that turned out to be. For the first time since I was a kid, after a couple of marathon reading sessions, I found myself reluctant to turn the lights off at night. Lovecraft's best stories established an atmosphere of dread to which I related very personally — particularly in tales such as "Call of Cthulhu," "The Dunwich Horror," "The Whisperer in Darkness," "Haunter of the Dark," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," "Dreams in the Witch House," "At the Mountains of Madness," and, of course, "The Colour Out of Space." At the time, it seemed the author had reached forward through the years to tweak my most personal "fear" nerves. The concept of unimaginable cosmic forces and intelligences that rendered humankind inconsequential, combined with the eeriness of geographic and personal isolation, affected me like no other works of dark fiction ever had.

Few filmmakers have successfully adapted Lovecraft's fiction for the screen. Stuart Gordon, with Reanimator, From Beyond, Dagon, and Dreams in the Witch House (from the Showtime series Masters of Horror ), succeeded in capturing at least a smidgen of the source materials' respective essences. Some of the most impressive adaptations have been low-budget, independent efforts, such as The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness, and the German adaptation Die Farbe (The Color) . I personally enjoy AIP's The Dunwich Horror (1970, directed by Daniel Haller) because it's a fun film, with a few enjoyable nods to the original story. However, one would be hard-pressed to argue that it's a truly worthy adaptation. AIP's Die, Monster, Die! (1965, also directed by Daniel Haller and starring Boris Karloff and Nick Adams), is ostensibly based on "The Colour Out of Space," though the liberties it takes with a story render the source material almost unrecognizable. Now, back in 1987, I wandered into a movie called The Curse, directed by David Keith, mainly because it was the only horror flick I could find at the cinema that weekend. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was, in fact, based on "The Colour Out of Space." This adaptation boasts a few effective moments, but, again, falls considerably short of doing justice to the original work.

With 2019's Color Out of Space , director Richard Stanley takes on the task of adapting one of Lovecraft's most celebrated tales. In the original story, a meteor falls to earth, landing on a remote farm owned by Nahum Gardner. Soon, the family's well becomes the center of a kind of plague, which mutates plant life and — eventually — human beings. The alien force, which arrived on Earth via the meteorite, manifests itself as a kind of "indescribable colour," exhibiting properties more akin to atomic radiation than your typical marauding extraterrestrial. In the new film, Nahum Gardner becomes Nathan Gardner, played by Nicolas Cage. The Gardner family — Nathan, his wife Theresa (Joely Richardson), sons Jack (Julian Hillard) and Benny (Brendan Meyer), and daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) — has moved to a secluded farm outside of Arkham, MA. A hydrologist named Ward Phillips (Elliot Knight) arrives to survey the area in preparation for a planned hydroelectric dam. In the original story, the surveyor narrates the events years after the fact, while in the film, he becomes mostly an observer to the events as they happen. One may note with some satisfaction that Phillips is played by an African American, which might well have mortified Lovecraft, who wasn't exactly known for his appreciation of races other than Caucasian.

The plot generally follows Lovecraft's, with a slow, taut buildup as it becomes clear that the fallen meteorite is having a fairly nasty impact on the local environment. The produce from the family's garden grows too fast and too large, and proves inedible, to put it mildly. Insects and other specimens of the local wildlife mutate into barely recognizable life forms. And the members of the family begin to exhibit signs of having been infected by something exceptionally virulent.

It's no great spoiler to reveal that, true to your typical H.P. Lovecraft story, things in this film do not end well.

Not for anyone in the film, at least. For the audience, the slow, creeping storyline increases in velocity until it becomes a wild, runaway train. Now, Lovecraft is not known for his runaway trains, but in this movie, for the most part, the pacing works. It did take some time to warm up to the film. In the beginning, the Gardner family fails to engage, with young Lavinia not altogether convincingly playing the eccentric teenager, the rest of the gang falling somewhere between colorless and annoying. I've never been much of a Nicolas Cage fan, although his performance in Raising Arizona is nothing less than classic. However, once the "colour" manifests itself, it becomes easier to relate to the characters. Cage, far from annoying me, as he often has on film, engaged me, to the point of actually becoming endearing. The occasional moments of humor come off as natural and genuine; rather ironic, since humor cannot be said to be one of Lovecraft's characteristic devices. A favorite scene is when a news crew interviews the Gardners at their home about the strange goings-on. As the camera focuses on a disheveled Nathan, who appears to have just crawled out of bed, he realizes his hair has gone completely awry. Here, amid the mounting grimness, he cries, "Could no one think to bring me a comb?" Lavinia, who aspires to be a white witch, owns a copy of the Simon Necronomicon . As a visual joke, it's subtle but amusing as hell, since the Simon Necronomicon really is a joke. The Gardners' neighbor is an octogenarian hippie named Ezra, aptly played by Tommy Chong. Not surprisingly, he has a few words of wisdom to offer about the cannabis plant.
Once the color overruns the farm in earnest, the cinematic spectacle becomes impressive. Now, since an "unidentifiable, imperceptible" color doesn't exactly play well on screen, what we have is a vivid, altogether lovely shade of violet/magenta. The lighting effects, the entire color palette of the film, evoke an atmosphere absolutely worthy of Lovecraft's most vivid descriptions. But beyond the visual eeriness, sounds from the Gardners' well indicate that there's more than just an innocuous, unidentifiable color at work. Squire Ezra makes a tape recording of the sounds, which he claims are living things moving underground.

As plant and animal life succumb to the warping influence of the color, imagery reminiscent of John Carpenter's The Thing abounds. One could rightly call it derivative, yet in the context of this film, it feels right. Like, maybe there could actually be some tenuous connection between these disparate properties. This was merely a passing thought I had while watching the film, but I rather enjoy indulging it.

It's to the film's credit that, after initially presenting a somewhat less-than-engaging family unit, the Gardners elicit sympathy — a sense that they are victims of a genuine tragedy, as opposed to a gaggle of obnoxious ciphers whom you cannot wait to see painted out of the picture. The fate that befalls Theresa and young Jack is grotesque, repulsive, yet strangely powerful. Moving, in its way. The middle act of the film does hit on all cylinders far more than it misses.

The same cannot necessarily be said of the final act. As the film hurtles toward its climax, the train comes dangerously close to derailing. Thankfully, it stays on the tracks, but only just. The visual effects finally hit overload stage, where everything that might have remained subtle comes on full bore. And as the film moves toward its resolution, finally, a little bit of the original, Lovecraftian mood, the eeriness, makes a brief and welcome return.

I suppose it's a small thing, but one of the most personally disappointing aspects of the movie was the absence of what I consider the original story's most striking imagery: the trees around the Gardner farm moving of their own accord, the tips of their branches blazing with the unearthly color. That image, rendered in the text so vividly yet so suggestive in its implications, struck me more deeply than any other in the tale. I kept hoping to see that money shot in the film. Alas, it never came. Also, I rather missed references to "The Blasted Heath," an epithet which, in the story, described the devastated remains of the Gardners' land.

Lovecraft's prose, overwrought as it might be, remains impressionistic. However grotesque or monstrous or lurid the events in his tales, his prose merely sketches the details for the reader. You never get Barker-esque descriptions of gore, or intimate, camera-eye views of screaming madness. More often, Lovecraft offers the reader an emotionally charged yet detached, distant narrator. Lovecraft suggests what your eyes should be seeing. He rarely describes it for you.

Stanley's movie shows you everything — and then some — that Lovecraft suggests.

So, Color Out of Space , while in most ways radically different from anything Lovecraft ever would have written, mostly succeeds as an adaptation of something he did write. The film's striking, atmospheric imagery — despite the absence of that money shot I wish had been there — creates a rare, convincing sense of the otherworldly. Until the finale, it doesn't hammer you with lurid CGI, which has become the bane of virtually every film with a single special effects shot. Over the course of the film, enough humor and tragedy come into play sufficiently to snuff that initial sense of ennui.

Yes, there's flaws aplenty in this film, yet, overall, it maintains a solidity (barely) that, for me, makes it a keeper. I'll rate Color Out of Space 3.5 out of 5 Damned Rodan Dirty Firetinis.
Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson and director Richard Stanley on the set of Color Out of Space Hydrologist Ward Phillips (Elliot Knight), Nathan Gardner (Nicolas Cage), and
Mayor Tooma (Q'orianka Kilcher) of Arkham The "Colour" has come to Earth via meteorite. Jack (Julian Hillard) tries to figure out what's moving down in the well. Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) takes a shine to hydrologist Ward Phillips (Elliot Knight).

Fun in All Directions

02022020: a palindrome, a sequence that reads the same backward and forward — today's date, for example. So, the brain trust at geocaching.com, as it is inclined on certain, usually random occasions, offered a virtual "souvenir" to geocachers who log a geocache find or attend a geocaching event on February 2, 2020. I believe there were a handful of events in the area, but to earn the day's souvenir, I joined the Usual Suspects — Cupdaisy (a.k.a. Shoffner), Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), and Old Robgso (a.k.a. Rob) — for one of our regular Sunday geocaching outings. This time, we hauled ourselves out to the American Tobacco Trail in Wake County to see how much of a new train-themed geoart series, placed by friend NCBiscuit (a.k.a. Linda) we could claim. Geoart simply means that the geocache icons form a specific pattern on the geocaching overlay on Google maps. This particular example resembles the front of a steam engine barreling right at you. There are forty caches in the series (plus a bonus), which occupy about a nine-mile stretch of the American Tobacco Trail. Mind you, that's one-way, start-to-finish, so since we were hoofing it, we were pretty sure we would not be completing the entire geoart. (Some of us are old. Some of us are really old.) And we didn't. But we did put in a good eight-mile round trip, and we did make a fair dent in the numbers (we claimed 28 out of 40). By the time we arrived back at Ms. Fishdownthestair's cache mobile, we were traveling on some reasonably sore dogs.

Somewhere along the line, someone decided that, rather than go by our usual team monkers, such as Team No Dead Weight or The Usual Suspects, we should call ourselves Groundhogs. So we did.

Much to my surprise, at the end of the day's geocaching, my total cache count turned out to be a palindrome as well: 11711. Figure that!
Jackelope!
After our big old trail hike, we stopped at a nearby cache called "The Jackelope" (GC8GH1V), which provided us with a nice chuckle. Then we procured a very late lunch at The Carolina Brewery in Pittsboro, which has become our regular stop for vittles when we're caching in that area. Decent stuff, to be sure.

Now, lord knows this old fellow needs the hoofing-it mileage more than the brewery fare, but I can testify that by this time we were sure enough suffering from The Great Starvation. (Just ask my cats how awful this condition is.) When I first started geocaching, in early 2008, I was still smoking and carrying around something in the neighborhood of 210 pounds — which, I can tell you, is about 30 pounds too much for this weenie frame. As I dove whole-heartedly into geocaching, with the associated hiking and various physical challenges, I stopped smoking and lost over 20 pounds. For a good five years, I kept the weight off, maintained a reasonably healthy diet (wine doesn't have any calories, does it?), and exercised constantly (even above and beyond the geocaching, at least on occasion). However, in more recent days, since I have to travel farther and farther afield to claim caches, the exercise is a bit less frequent, although — most often — just as intense as ever. Still, I fear I have not correspondingly reduced my calorie intake or maintained a regular non-geocaching exercise regimen. Thus, some of that old weight has found its way back onto these old bones. As much for vanity's sake as for my health, I figure I really should shed some of this re-accumulated bulk. At least I'm still hovering  just under 200 pounds; still a a good bit less than my maximum, least-healthy weight.

Okay, so I had a beer at the brewery. OKAY, SO I HAD TWO BEERS AT THE BREWERY. I promise won't do it again.

Well, at least until I'm back in Pittsboro.
The Groundhogz! Left to Right: Old Man, Old Rob, Old Scott, Ever-So-Slightly-Less-Old Natalie,
Older'n-Fookin'-Methuselah Shoffner

Thorne & Cross: Haunted Nights LIVE!Now You Just Listen Here...

'Tis done — Ms. Massie and I appeared this evening on Thorne & Cross: Haunted Nights LIVE! , courtesy of hosts Tamara Thorne, Alistair Cross, and regular guest interviewer QL Pearce. An fun (for us, at least!) half-hour show, primarily about the Ameri-Scares Series for Young Readers . Fifteen minutes before the show began, I sent the manuscript of my latest — Ohio: Fear the Grassman! — to Crossroad Press. I'm not sure of a release date as yet, but so far, the Ameri-Scares books I've completed so far have been released fairly quickly after I've turned them in. Will keep you posted, of course.

Listen to the episode here — Elizabeth Massie & Stephen Mark Rainey on Thorne & Cross: Haunted Nights LIVE! — and then run for your lives. Or sit back and have a relaxing drink. Whatever floats the boat, and all that.

It's a Wrap! Ameri-Scares Ohio: Fear the Grassman!

Yessir, a couple of days ago, I slapped "The End" on my latest Ameri-Scares novel, Ohio: Fear the Grassman!, and tonight I've completed my final edit before sending it out to Crossroad Press. Of course, there will be copy editing and possible revisions before publication. I'm not sure what the release date will be, but my previous Ameri-Scares releases have hit the street relatively quickly after I've turned them in. The image you see at left is a collage of photos and art I created, some of which may appear on the actual cover.

Fear the Grassman!
THE STORY:
Five years ago, young Landon Shrewsbury saw something that scared him to death: a giant, shadowy figure lurking in the woods around his house. Something that left huge footprints in his yard. Five years later, at age thirteen, Landon has convinced himself he imagined the whole experience. But now, numerous people in Sugarcreek, Ohio, report seeing just such a creature. When his parents leave town for a week-long vacation, Landon is left in his older brother's care. And to his horror, the frightening, shadowy menace from his childhood returns. Landon, his brother Kevin, and his new friend Tami suddenly find themselves being stalked by the fearsome giant known as the Grassman. Now, the three of them must discover the reason for the beast's return — and find a way to stop its violent rampage — before they fall victim to its inhuman fury.

Tune in on this Thursday (January 30) at 8:00 PM EST to Thorne & Cross Haunted Nights LIVE , when Elizabeth Massie and I will take our turns on the air, talking primarily about the Ameri-Scares series. Ms. Massie has just turned in her newest entry, for the state of Montana.

The Ameri-Scares series is currently being developed for television by Warner Brothers and Margot Robbie's LuckyChap Entertainment.

You can check out a couple of excerpts from Ohio: Fear the Grassman! here:

Ohio: Fear the Grassman! Excerpt #1

Ohio: Fear the Grassman! Excerpt #2

Monsters in Midland, The Bathroom Bomber Flight, & More

Saturday, January 18, 2020
Okay, so maybe the monsters is us. Brugger and me, that is. Since she and I have celebrated Christmas down south every year that we've been together, it has become tradition to have a late holiday celebration with her folks in Michigan in January. So, early this morning, we set out for Midland via United Airlines, by way of Chicago and then Flint. (No, we did not drink the water.) Coffee. I drank coffee. I will say the coffee on our United flight was somewhat superior to the coffee I've had on Delta, which has typically been our Michigan-bound airline, and shit tons better than the coffee on American and British Airways, which carried us back and forth on our relatively recent European outing. And United gave us Star Wars napkins. You seriously can't go wrong when you've got Star Wars napkins.

To my surprise — because I had not looked in advance — there is a virtual geocache inside Chicago's O'Hare Airport. It lay no more than half a mile from our gate, and since we had about a 30-minute layover, I figured I could hoof it to GZ, claim the virtual, and get back before our nice little Canadair CRJ550 left without me. Happily, I made it to the cache and back with almost fifteen minutes to spare. And so, I added another Illinois cache to my tally to start the day right. Ms. B. and I are hoping to visit Chicago and see a bunch of my old friends sometime later this year. I'm sure I'll get a few more Illinois caches under my belt then.

Del & Fern met us in Flint, and from there we drove the hour or so to Casa di Brugger in Midland. Also tradition is for Fern to prepare for us her famous kielbasa-vegetable soup and patented sandwich spread, which filled us up all nice and proper. We made the rest of the afternoon and evening pretty mellow. A shopping trip for provisions, and then a relaxing evening in the downstairs den with wine and TV.
Ms. B. and Old Dude, frigid at the Tridge Old Rodan geocaching with an odd coupleSunday, January 19, 2020
Some of us got up pretty early; had a decent breakfast, with nonstop coffee; and spent a good portion of the day working on his latest Ameri-Scares novel, which is coming into the final stretch. Somebody else (ahem... Kimberly) might have slept in very late. Later, Del brought us in a fine feast from China Palace . Then, Ms. B. and I headed out to do some geocaching in the snow. My main target was a relatively new virtual called " The Tridge" ( GC88Z72 ) at....the Tridge, a three-span footbridge over the Tittabawassee and Chippewa rivers in downtown Midland. Why, yes, it was freezing cold out there. They grow the snow deep here. Yeppers, when I was an old dude, I used to go geocaching in the snow... uphill, both ways... with no shoes....

I picked up a few other park & grab caches, and tried for a couple of "non-winter-friendly" caches — which generally means they're on the ground and liable to be covered with snow. Indeed, the "non-winter-friendly" label applied in no uncertain terms.

From there, we fit in a bit of necessary shopping and went for coffee at a nice little shop near downtown called Live Oak . Ms. B. loved the Vanilla Latte, and I had a very good Chai. Back at Casa di Brugger, we scavenged dinner for ourselves and once again spent a mellow evening at home with the folks. Nice.
Enjoying hot drinks at Live Oak Coffee Shop after some mighty cold geocaching
Monday, January 20, 2020
Once again, the older of this monstrous pair rose relatively early and, after a spot of breakfast and coffee, set right to making forward progress on Ohio: Fear the Grassman! Apparently, the comfy chair and Ottoman in the Bruggers' basement is the place in the world most conducive to writing stuff. I blew through several chapters on my way to the finish — just as I had blown through the writing of West Virginia: Lair of the Mothman when I was working on it there last year. I'm down to the last couple of chapters of this one, so I may be able to finish the book while we're still in Midland. We shall see.

Noon-ish, Ms. B, Del, Fern, and I found lunch at Culver's , a decent little burger joint at Midland Mall. Ms. B. and I had come here on my first trip to Michigan in 2014, but I hadn't been back since; it was worth the return visit. From there, we hit the road for Coleman, about 20 miles up US 10, to visit Kimberly's Aunt Betty and Cousin Jeannie. We enjoyed spending time at their tranquil place out in the country. On our return trip, we stopped in Sanford, a tiny community about midway between Coleman and Midland, as the ladies wanted to see if the antique store there was open. It was not. However, in Sanford, there is a webcam cache ( "Who Named the Best Little Town by a Dam Site?" GCJRV9 ) — a pretty rare type these days. Although it's technically a two-stage cache, in the interest of sparing the rest of the gang an outing in the cold and snow, I had tracked down the location of the webcam in advance so I could quickly capture my photo to claim the find. Then, while the other folks stopped back at Midland Mall to purchase a few necessary wares, I hunted a couple of the caches in that area. But of all things! I think one of them is just plain missing, and the other — a cache I had sought in vain on a previous visit — was just archived yesterday. Anyhoo, I certainly got in some below-freezing-weather caching today.
Old Rodan at the webcam cache (GCJRV9) in Sanford, MIDuring the evening, after making a bit more progress on the novel, I ventured forth with Ms. B. to Whine, our traditional favorite imbibing spot when we're in Midland. We enjoyed far more wining than whining. Then we shopped for our upcoming Late Christmas dinner, which will be Chicken Marsala. Per our tradition, I will be playing chef.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Hey, it's Christmas! It comes a little late for the Brugger-Rainey cadre, but hey, better late than never. Last night at Whine, Kimberly and I were discussing the groceries we needed to pick up for "Christmas," which clearly confused the hell out of a guy sitting next to us, who couldn't help but overhear our conversation. Maybe he thought we were from Canada or some other weird place, I don't know. Anyway, Chicken Marsala headlined our menu, which is one of my favorite dishes to prepare. Perhaps I'll post a recipe for it sometime. Not just now.
Little Christmas scene — one of Del's holiday creations Dinner in the works Dinner on the table The first cut is the deepest. How bloody rude!
Anyway, we exchanged a slew of loverly, loverly gifts. Ms. B. presented her folks with several items she had purchased while we were in Europe. A highlight was a metal-tipped, handmade walking stick she had picked up for Del in Montserrat, Spain (see "Mediterranean Sojourn pt. 7: Montserrat and Homeward Bound," November 8, 2019 ). At the monastery there, you can buy walking sticks made by the monks, and knowing her dad appreciated such things, Kim decided to get him one as a Christmas gift. A particular stick caught her fancy, but it was a hair too long to fit in her luggage to bring home. And, of course, there was no way we could have just carried it onto the plane. So, the night before we left, she found a serrated kitchen knife in our VRBO apartment, and the lot of us took turns sawing off the metal tip. It was one hell of an effort (that was some hard, hard wood), but we accomplished it. And so now, Del has a metal tip he can enjoy reattaching to his walking stick. (He does all kinds of such crafty things for enjoyment, I might add). Having a little story to go with it made the gift a bit more fun for all involved. Me, I got some of my favorite yogurt-coated pretzels from Holmes County, OH, where we regularly meet Del & Fern in springtime. That area of Ohio, I might add, is the setting of my in-progress-damn-near-finished Ameri-Scares novel, Ohio: Fear the Grassman!

The Chicken Marsala turned out to be one of my best efforts. Dang near perfect was the consensus. However, while slicing bread, Kimberly came perilously close to slicing off a critical finger. At least a slice or two of that bread would have made a nice appetizer for Count Dracula. And now she's stuck making gestures that people who don't know the story might consider a wee bit rude.

During the evening, Ms. B. and I met her old friend Darren at Bar Oxygen , an appealing, if somewhat overpriced lounge at the H Hotel downtown. They do have good drinks (including the Jalapeno Cucumber Gin Rickey, which I discovered there last year (see "More Midland Misadventures," January 12, 2019 ); it's like a hot and spicy salad in a refreshing drink), and the atmosphere is irresistible. After this, Ms. B. hauled me over to find a cache at a neat location just west of downtown ( "You Shall Not Pass!" GC6NM88 ). Afterward, we spent more mellow times with her folks watching Chopped on The Food Network . This is one of those traditional Brugger thingummies. I actually enjoyed it.

Wednesday, January 22, 2020
The Bruggers went out antiquing pretty early, so I settled myself in the basement in my favorite chair and worked on Ohio: Fear the Grassman! In fact, I ended up all but finishing Ohio: Fear the Grassman! I have only a few short paragraphs left to wrap it up — at least the first draft. I'll need to go in there and do some editing before I send it out to Crossroad. But getting to this point was way too long coming, thanks to one crisis after another back in the fall and early winter.

Unfortunately, a migraine set in just before dinnertime. Fortunately, it was such a mild migraine, it didn't knock me out. After the ocular light show was done, the headache never really developed.

For dinner, Ms. B. and I went to Villa D'Alessandro , which I had never visited, although Ms. B. used to go when it was in another (apparently less expensive) location. We quite enjoyed a bottle of Masi Campofiorin, a nice, not-too-pricey Italian red blend. For the entrées, I ordered the Capelli d'Angelo alla Bolognese (beef & pork Bolognese sauce over angel hair), which was excellent, although for the pasta I would have preferred tagliatelle, which we had in Italy on several occasions. Brugger really enjoyed her Portabella Ravioli — ravioli filled with Portabella mushrooms, ricotta, Pecorino Romano and Parmesan cheese, served in a cream sauce with mushrooms, onions, and garlic. I tried some of hers and almost fell over, it was so good.

And finally, we ended up our last night in Midland watching TV in the basement again with Del and Fern. I don't know exactly when Kimberly and I went to bed, but it was pretty late.

Thursday, January 23, 2020
And off we flew for home. Well, eventually. I had predicted that, because we had blizzard conditions and no delays on the way up, today we would have delays because the weather wasn't bad. We did. Now, there was a bit of snow in Chicago, but that in itself didn't seem to be the holdup. I'm pretty sure overbooked flights lay at the root of it.

Anyway, our Flint to Chicago flight I have dubbed the CO2 Flight because it was the talkiest flight I think I have ever taken. The guys behind us never paused to breathe during the whole hour in the plane. Just emitted copious quantities of CO2, which would have registered damn near lethal levels had we tested the air. The Chicago to Greensboro flight I have dubbed the Bathroom Bomber Flight because Ms. B. and I sat at the back of the plane, just in front of the john, and from the time we boarded the plane until we landed, that bathroom was loaded. People stood in line to get in there for uncomfortably lengthy spells (uncomfortably for me, I should say). In fact, our take-off was delayed beyond the original delay because some bumpkin had to hit the head after we were all buckled in and ready to be pushed back from the gate. So, we missed that window, and thus had to wait another 20 minutes to roll. Damn, people!

Another fookin' migraine set in right at the start of the Bathroom Bomber Flight. It wasn't as innocuous as yesterday's migraine, but at least it wasn't killer. A relatively mild headache.

Anyhoo, I'm back home, the blog is writ, and I've got a couple of paragraphs to finish up in Ohio: Fear the Grassman!

I sure do wish I had that chair from the Bruggers' basement. Hell, I wish I was in the Bruggers' basement right about now.

That is all.

Ameri-Scares on Thorne & Cross: Haunted Nights LIVE! • 30 January 2020 • 8 PM EST

Authors Tamara Thorne and Alistair Cross , in addition to writing wickedly weird novels, run their own interview show on Authors on the Air Radio . Every Thursday evening at 8:00 PM EST (5:00 PM PST), you can find them at their best, grilling authors of dark fiction (sometimes with hot sauce). On Thursday, January 30, Elizabeth Massie and I will take our turns on the air, talking primarily about the Ameri-Scares series for young readers. Currently, I am finishing up my third novel in the series, Ohio: Fear the Grassman! Elizabeth has just turned in her newest, for the state of Montana.

The Ameri-Scares series is currently being developed for television by Warner Brothers and Margot Robbie's LuckyChap Entertainment.

You can tune in to Haunted Nights LIVE  on January 30 at 8:00 PM EST using the following link: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/authorsontheair/2020/01/31/elizabeth-massie-stephen-mark-rainey-join-thorne-cross-haunted-nights-live. Check out their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/HauntedNightsLIVEpodcast.

We hope you'll join us.