As stories of the Goatman clop their way westward across the American continent, the thoughts of a nation turn to Maryland’s monster in a desperate bid to assimilate his cloven feet and rugged beard, his buff physique and uneven temperament, his steely glare and nasal bray, into the larger framework of national mythology. Texas! Missouri! Oklahama! California! The Goatman marches. In the same way that Maryland turned their intrepid mutation into a nightstalking vessel for an age’s worth of urban legend – the hookman, the Crybaby Bridge and even Bigfoot – so, too, do other states incorporate the fantastical axe-wielding émigré into their own local folklore.

While the Goatman blazed his way across the American South, stopping once in Arkansas to brandish a severed human leg at a Sonic waitress and once in Texas to chase after a rowdy band of teenagers, rumors of his possible connection to El Chupacabra began to surface. Could the insidious goat sucker that’s been exsanguinating American beef stock be the unholy progeny of the Goatman’s cross-country sex safari? Probably not – though it has been suggested. A more popular theory is that, given his penchant for ruthlessly dispensing with neighborhood pets, the Goatman might be El Chupacabra’s cousin. Sounds similar to Maryland’s “Bigfoot is a relative of the Goatman” theory, no?

While the Goatman diverted northward through Oklahoma and, eventually, Washington State, Bigfoot aficionados began to balk at the monster’s popularity. Many modern Sasquatch enthusiasts branded the creature a children’s story, undeserving of either national press or rigorous scientific attention. In a 1998 article in the “Washington City Paper,” (“The Legend of Goatman”) Tennessee Bigfoot hunter Scott McNabb dismissively declared, “Goatman is not an interest of mine.” McNabb went on to explain that, unlike Bigfoot, the Goatman tale lacks historical and scientific plausibility. Other Bigfoot hunters, while equally skeptical, have been more diplomatic in their assessment of Maryland’s fair-weather paranormal mascot – perhaps, they posit, the so called “Goatman” is a sasquatch that has fallen ill and lost patches of hair, causing it to appear more like a human/animal hybrid than a full-on missing link. One thing’s certain – for someone who’s feeling a bit under the weather, homeboy sure gets around.

The question is, what is it about the Goatman story – once the paragon of a locally confined myth – that has allowed its progress from anytown, MD to everytown, USA? Other equally compelling taxonomical conundrums (the Dover Demon, the Loveland Frog, the Beast of Bray Road, etc.) have gained national attention without ever managing to parlay local infamy into a physical nationwide presence.

Maybe it’s the fact that, as a humanoid creature with a consistently dark, but methodologically varied, modus operandi, the Goatman fits in nicely with America’s array of local Bigfoot analogs (Skunk Ape, Wild Man, Sasquatch, Tsiatko, etc.), many of whom display varying behaviors, but all of whom exhibit similar physical attributes. Bipedal posture. Hirsute bodies. Man-like faces. Heck, even Marylanders have posited the Goatman as Bigfoot’s genetic constituent. And the thing both Bigfoot and the Goatman have over, say, the Loveland Frog (a giant frog) is that they kinda look like big, hairy dudes in the woods. In the eyes of an observer, an axe-schlepping lumberjack is just four beers and forty feet away from the Goatman (or from evidence that Bigfoot’s a shill for the logging industry).

Maybe it’s a combination of natural Internet proliferation combined with his striking resemblance to the devil. Given that urban legends tend to spread most readily among an American teenage demographic that has, for decades, afforded all things Satanic a bleary eyed thumbs up (see every pentagram etched apathetically on to middle-school notebooks ever), a story about an evil marauding demon who hunts down doers of “it” comes pretty much campfire ready.

Maybe it’s just because he’s a man-sized goat with an axe.

Regardless, you might think about setting an extra place at the kitchen table. And picking up a third ticket to prom. The Goatman is coming to your town. And attending your prom after he eats dinner at your house. Maryland totally owes you one.

Save for one generalized tale of Satanism (The Goatman is a ritualistically summoned demon), the origin stories ascribed to the Goatman are the best kind of local folklore – geographically obsessed, historically revisionist and unflinchingly paranoid. That isn’t to say that they’re particularly original. You’ll recognize the antiseptic white of the research facility’s corridors, and the hollow screams resounding from mental ward cells. Still, of all the secret government labs in all the towns in all the world, the Goatman walked out of Beltsville, Maryland’s.

Given Maryland’s proximity to Washington, D.C., it’s no surprise that the government has been implicated in the genesis of the Goatman. Specifically, it’s the government’s Agricultural Research Facility, located in Beltsville, that often takes the blame (though I would think it unlikely that they also gave their horrific mutation an axe. Perhaps a rogue Smithsonian curator got involved). If the government has property in or near a town, you can count on it becoming the nexus of at least one sensational and horrifying urban myth (e.g., the U.S.S. Eldridge, the Montauk Project, et al).

There are two schools of thought as to the true nature of the Goatman – some folks believe that he’s an anomalously hairy, super-sized human whose feral lifestyle has earned him the appearance, and corresponding badittude, of a goat; Others think that he is an actual, genuine monster composed of one-half horrifying goatness and one-half unfettered masculinity. For the people whose theories tend toward the former, the Goatman was once a burly, 7-foot-tall government scientist who lost his funding and, subsequently, his mind, then ran screaming out into the woods and began a new life of regimented beard growth and teen sex intervention. (Because a monster? That’s ridiculous!) For the latter camp, the Goatman is the accidental result of a government experiment gone horribly awry. What kind of experiment? It usually isn’t specified, though one version suggests that an early cancer researcher injected a goat with live cancer cells, which, when combined with radiation or something, kick-started the animal’s transformation (metastasis?).

In his book “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” journalist Jon Ronson does, in fact, claim that the government has been known to use de-bleated goats for various training and tests, but given the Goatman’s alleged noisy vocalizations, it seems unlikely that he started as a member of Uncle Sam’s black ops seen-not-heard herd. Fortunately, there’s another, more recent theory: the Goatman is an escaped inmate of Glenn Dale Hospital. Again, in this case, two variations exist – the one where he’s a hulking nutcase and the one where he’s a freakish medical experiment. Both versions agree that he came straight from the stark-raving hell of restrained lunatics and abused maniacs that constituted the now-derelict Glenn Dale Hospital. There’s only one problem with this hypothesis – Glenn Dale Hospital was never, as many websites suggest, a mental hospital. It was a tuberculosis sanitarium used to isolate contagious victims of the then-common disease from the public at large, and from other hospital communities. After the building was declared a free-range asbestos ranch and shut down in 1982, however, paranormal investigators and urban photographers laid siege to the grounds, extensively (and inaccurately) blogging about their explorations of the abandoned Glenn Dale asylum. Interestingly, no story that I’ve found suggests that the Goat Man is an escaped tuberculosis patient, driven insane by his disease and often mistaken for a goat due to his rasping, nasal cough. But I guess a brawny psychopath is more frightening/goat-like than a wheezing tubercular corpse, despite historical veracity.

Nowadays, in deference to his fantastical origins and initial rambunctiousness, the Maryland Goatman seems to have abandoned flamboyant assaults on copulating youth in favor of covert pet theft and vandalism. It seems more than likely that the Goatman has fled its stomping grounds, leaving the people of the Old Line State to repurpose his horrific legacy into a banal catch-all blame depository. Can’t find the dog? The Goatman took it. Something dented your car door? ‘Twas the Goatman’s axe. Thankfully, as Maryland trembles in the wake of their misdemeanorous Scapegoatman, the true monster has taken his act on the road.

Friday: The America Goatman

Below are descriptions of three grotesque monsters. Two of them are merely the fictional creations of popular artists; one is a creature that has actually been reported. Can you Find the Fiend?

a) This fearsome humanoid bear-like creature, which is said to have the face of a man and the feet of a swine, supposedly resides deep inside a cave near Colorado’s Manitou Cliff Dwellings.

b) Part owl, part bear and part man, this 7-foot-tall flying monstrosity stalks the skies surrounding an ancient church.

c) This grotesque mystery of nature exhibits both feline and canine features. Research into the animal’s parentage has turned up few leads and even fewer revelations.

Answer after the cut.

(more…)

The legend of the Maryland Goatman is as much a narrative chimera as its deformed antagonist is a physical one. Descriptions of the hulking manimal, whose bushy beard and hairy human torso sit atop sinewy goat legs and fibrous hooves, immediately recall the mischievous satyrs of Greek mythology. Pop a couple horns on his fat, angry head (as some cryptozoologically inclined artistes have), and the Goatman even looks a bit like certain artist renderings of Satan, only with a cartoonishly threatening double-bladed axe in lieu of the classic sinner-pokin’ pitchfork.

I know. It’s hard to think of a modern story that doesn’t owe something to the Greeks or the Pagans or medieval personifications of evil. (Maybe “Sideways,” but even there – who can honestly look at Paul Giamatti without picturing him wearing a diaper and shooting heart-tipped arrows at a cartoon dog just as it’s looking at a cartoon cat?) But even as a modern American urban legend, the Goatman is a different animal.

Take, for instance, the monster’s aforementioned ‘50s debut – a bombastic affair in which the axe-toting Goatman went violently a-knockin’ on the hood of a car that was a-rockin’. After gleefully cutting in on the teenage couple’s horizontal mambo, the crazed monster fled into the woods, leaving the terrified adolescents practically peeing their pants, but actually just peeing the car seat near the pants that they had so lustfully removed. This story, and its ensuing echoed repetition among the randy pubescent suburbanites of Prince George’s County, bears all the tongue-clucking sex-negative hallmarks s of the ubiquitous hook-handed killer urban legend. Granted, some irritating scraping and a hook on the door handle is a bit subtler than enraged, melee-ready, bipedal livestock, but, you know, whatever it takes to chop a message through those thick teenage skulls, right?

Now, I don’t know about where you live, but here in Ohio, we’ve got at least two dozen alleged crybaby bridges – water-spanning roadways from which nighttime drivers claim to hear the sobbing of apparitional infants and women. These bridges are reported in every state (to the extent that well-known folklorist and artist Jesse Glass even declared the phenomenon Internet-perpetrated “fakelore”), and every bridge has its own story about a drowned baby or a suicidal lady, blah blah blah, hear the pathetic whiners’ posthumous boo-hooing. In Prince George’s County, though, that isn’t a fussy ghost you hear bawling its stupid eyes out under the bridge – it’s the Goatman. And he’s braying. Because he’s enraged. Or in heat. Either way, it’s another prevalent urban legend that Maryland has appended to the ink, type and whisper patchwork that is the Goatman tale.

A few imaginative Marylanders have even gone as far as to dub the Goatman “Bigfoot’s cousin.” Man ape. Man goat. It’s all the same to them.

The Goatman story may be composed of a buncha locally repackaged urban myths, but he isn’t only that. He has an origin story. More accurately, in typical “now make it giant and crazy and give it an axe” Maryland fashion, he has about five. And all of them are winners. Check back on Wednesday to find out how this bridge-sobbing hump disrupter came into being, and what the U.S. Government had to do with it.

If you want another example of the difference between Native American Skinwalker lore and white America’s (find me a black person fondling crystals in Sedona and I’ll issue a correction) embarrassing Mulderfication thereof, one need look no further than Utah’s 480-acre Sherman Ranch, AKA Skinwalker Ranch. The muddled mythology of this supposed paranormal hotbed reads like a veritable roll call of late 20th century fringe culture supernatural obsessions. UFOs. Interdimensional vortices. Sasquatches. Psychic disturbances. Cattle mutilation. Glowing orbs. Ghostly apparitions. They’re all present and scientifically unaccounted for in one dusty, northern corner of the Beehive State.

It was investigative journalist George Knapp, best known for his frequent presence on talk radio’s paranormal mecca Coast to Coast AM, who first called “Jinkies!” on Sherman Ranch. Likewise, it was Knapp who invoked the Skinwalker legend in explaining some of the area’s countless tales of things that make any variety of ridiculous onomatopoeias in the night (for example, I have no idea what a “large humanoid creature” crawling out of a “glowing portal” sounds like). Knapp’s resulting two-part 2002 newspaper feature “Path of the Skinwalker,” which appeared in Sin City’s alt weekly “the Las Vegas Mercury,” is thousands of words worth of largely anonymous testimony (such as that of “a scientist” who has “a long list of peer-reviewed papers about cutting-edge scientific concepts”), grossly subjective reporting and references to the movie “Predator.”

What does any of this have to do with Skinwalkers? Well, according to Junior Hicks, helpfully identified in Knapp’s article as “the area’s unofficial historian for all things weird,” the local Ute Indian tribe believes that the ranch is cursed by evil Skinwalking Navajo spirits, who have turned the area into a dimensional base camp for their malevolent magical shenanigans. Hicks, the only source cited for Knapp’s Skinwalker info, goes on: “The Utes say the ranch is `the path of the Skinwalker.’ Tribe members are strictly forbidden from setting foot on the property.”

Okay… but ghosts, aliens and the Predator? What does any of that have to do with Skinwalkers? For the sake of progressing, let me rephrase: why, given all of the various phenomena reported at the ranch, did Knapp choose the Skinwalker story as the lynchpin of the article? The Ute story is mentioned all of two times, and even Knapp concludes that it fails to explain most of the mysterious happenings.

Wednesday’s post covered my thoughts on some of the larger socio-cultural ramifications of the larger proliferation of the Skinwalker legend. Self-hating white liberals reductively correlate Native American tradition with nature, spiritualism and, most condescendingly, innocent simplicity, brand it as “true” American heritage, sell it to other self-hating white liberals and think of it as reparations. The resulting mysticism Americans associate with Native Americans is once removed from their own cultural experience in a way that Bigfoot or crop circles aren’t. In the end, the same people who wouldn’t even skim a story called “Path of the UFO” will devour a narrative piece that has the slightest glaze of exaggerated indigent tribalism.

But none of that is Knapp’s fault. Homeboy’s just making a living. Obviously, Knapp, who would probably make a better salesman than he does a journalist, understands that the Indian curse angle is more compelling to most people than the psychic vortex angle, accuracy be damned. (On a side note, I always thought it was funny how paranormal researchers always try to back up their claims using the legends of primitive cultures. “We’ve got historical evidence! See, these scientifically ignorant superstitious guys who worshipped trees drew pictures of UFOs! If we made up UFOs, how did these people who thought lightening was a demon know about them?”)

Anyway, I want to end this week on a positive note. So, why did Knapp choose the Skinwalker story as the lynchpin of the article?

Because Skinwalker is an awesome word. Seriously. Even deprived of all cultural associations. It’s an unfamiliar pairing of two familiar concepts that induces an evocative mental image. Skinwalker. Totally wicked!

Though, I can’t help but think that conclusions like these are why the Navajo don’t like to talk about Skinwalkers.

Jason has killed a lot of folks with a lot of different tools. His victims may wonder, “Who is this man? And why is he murdering me?” Meanwhile, we the viewers want to know, “What is that tool he’s using? And what’s its history?”

Wonder no longer.

Today: Road Flare

As used by Jason in: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

Victim(s): Vinnie (Lit flare is forced into his mouth)

What do you get when you cross strontium nitrate with a bunch of boring crap? That’s right! Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” covered in strontium nitrate! I would have also accepted “the Arctic (or Indian) ocean filled with strontium nitrate!” “A road flare!” or “Lunchables!” Yup. Typical red-flamed road flares ignite and burn by way of strontium nitrate mixed with a stupid fuel source like dumb sawdust. Or moronic charcoal. Or something extra retarded called a “polymeric resin.” Most flares ignite at around 375 °F and burn at a wicked pissa hot 3,000 °F – the exact temperature of Satan’s bones (for this reason, most Mormon’s refuse to use them).

YOU CAN DRAW SORT OF! Some people have gone as far as to call strontium nitrate “The Best Nitrate” due to its use as the colorant in red fireworks. Can you draw red fireworks? Good. Can you label the picture “fireworks” so people don’t think I asked you to draw a bunch of buttholes? Perfect. Now, go ahead and draw a butthole next to the fireworks. It’s okay. People will just think it’s another firework. Really, though, it’s a butthole. And the butthole is watching fireworks.

What you know as “road flares,” your dead hobo grandparents knew as “fusees” (or “railroad flares”). On ye olde raily ways, when no one had radios and everything was crashing into everything else and then catching on fire and exploding, a train travelling an unsignaled line would drop flares to announce its existence to the train behind it. If that train encountered a burning flare, they stopped until the flare went out. Often, a conductor would use this time to quickly grope as many sleeping passengers as possible. Conductors would share their numerical groping stats with other conductors at the conductor bar. The conductor with the most gropes from a single flare wait won a day off. This is where we get the phrase “groper’s holiday.”

YOU CAN DRAW SORT OF! Railroad flares had spikes attached to them so they could be embedded in wooden railroad ties. Draw whatever you were actually thinking about when I was telling you that boring fact. Extra points if it has more than eight nipples or fewer than one head.

Road flares are also used to prevent forest fires via controlled burns – li’l baby fires ignited to clear away excess plant debris and keep fire breaks intact. Flares are also used in backfiring, a wildfire fighting technique that employs localized, low-intensity blazes, which burn off a progressing fire’s potential fuel sources. Like Smokey the Bear says: “Only you can prevent forest fires. And sometimes that means setting forest fires. But don’t set forest fires. Unless they’re the type of forest fires that actually prevent the other, non-preventative forest fires and… ugh. I tell you what – how about everyone just lights fires in sets of three and we’ll just count on it sorting itself out.”

YOU CAN DRAW SORT OF! Fighting fire with fire! That’s crazy! But sometimes it works. Draw a scene where something you’re afraid of is defeated using more of that thing. Examples might include an erupting volcano placed upside-down on top of a second erupting volcano so the volcanoes just erupt into one another, 2 police lieutenants shooting each other in the face, or something with two sandwiches. Maybe they have flare guns.

You tell me it’s a firework exploding a firework, but all I see is two buttholes inhaling each other.

Thank you, Jason, for helping us learn through murder.

Join me again soon for another thrilling installment of Jason Vorhees’ Arsenal!

The Navajo don’t really like to talk about Skinwalkers – especially with monster-obsessed whiteys who invariably convert rich oral tradition into airport-ready supernatural thrillers (Tony Hillerman’s “Skinwalkers”) and straight-to-DVD horror flicks (James Isaac’s “Skinwalkers”). That means that, assuming the four or five template-based paranormal blogs that feature excitable Skinwalker posts aren’t written by defecting Navajo tribesmen (a fairly safe bet), it’s difficult to separate the authentic Skinwalker lore from the hyperactive Native American fan fic of cable doc-obsessed Fox Mulder wannabes. For every believable, richly folkloric Navajo Skinwalker legend, there are two or three stories about this one time really late at night when a crazy manimal totally attacked someone (I swear, it happened to my cousin’s friend).

According to some (supposed) Navajo legends, during the Long Walk, when the U.S. government forced over 9,000 Navajos to take a 300-mile trudge to newly established reservation land near Fort Sumner, New Mexico, the Skinwalkers were the first to reach the destination. As Navajo women keeled over in the heat, and exhausted men struggled with unconscious children, Skinwalking witches simply transformed into coyotes and crows, which easily sprinted or flew all the way to the reservation. Despite the Skinwalkers’ traditionally evil nature, they are distinctly Navajo and, therefore, proved vital to the preservation of Navajo heritage in the wake of the cultural upheaval brought on by external forces.

Granted, there are plenty of Navajo tales that portray Skinwalkers in a more traditionally antagonistic light. Still, you’d be hard-pressed to find a non-Native Skinwalker story that offered anything but a watered-down cocktail of mystery and terror. They essentially play out like this:

One night a New Mexico state trooper was patrolling the desert around a Navajo reservation. Suddenly, he noticed a strange shape rushing up

alongside his car. The shape resolved into a hideous creature that ran as fast as the officer’s sedan could accelerate. The monster kept pace with the trooper for miles before finally dropping back and disappearing into the darkness. To this day, the officer refuses to patrol that accursed stretch of land.

The same non-native America that repackaged Native American art as kitschy fetish crafts and airbrushed paintings of wolves has turned Skinwalkers, who have a uniquely dynamic relationship with their origin culture, into generic monsters that lurk in the shadows and jump out at passing victims.

And I don’t think that’s a negative a thing.

For decades Native Americans have fought to retain their unique heritage and identities in the face of an ever homogenizing American culture. For most countries – countries with separate and independent geographies – it’s a low stakes game. Germanic tradition, for example, can be assimilated into America’s aggregate culture without losing its physical roots in Germany, or its emotional and intellectual roots in the Germans that still reside there. Native Americans only have America, and most of that was taken from them. The borders they do have – both geographical and cultural – are shrinking. The Navajo don’t really like to talk about Skinwalkers, and so the cable doc-obsessed Fox Mulder wannabes think of the beings as mystical native werewolves – feral and savage, or magic and prescient, or sexy and strong. Cold. Uni-dimensional. Non-dynamic. Inhuman.

The Navajo don’t really like to talk about Skinwalkers, and so the Fox Mulder wannabes are ignorant and xenophobic and maybe even mildly racist. But these things – ignorance, xenophobia, racism – build boundaries between people and cultures. These things strengthen borders.

During the Long Walk, the white men let the Skinwalkers charge on, unmolested, toward Fort Sumner because they saw them as animals. Because they didn’t recognize them for what they truly were – scouts and emissaries; patriarchs and magicians; Navajo. Perhaps today the Native Americans depend on white men to sell cheap headdresses and inauthentic drums and synthetic dream catchers, to make terrible straight-to-DVD horror movies, so all eyes are looking down at cash registers or through camera lenses while, unnoticed, a flock of crows passes by overhead.

Walk it Off – an abridged compendium of ye olde folk remedies and archaic antidotes culled from UCLA’s Archive of American Folk Medicine

Today’s ailment: Hiccups

The Homestead Thievery Gambit

You will need: 1 Convincing Accuser

Instructions: Have convincing accuser accuse hiccupper of stealing money “on a farm.”

The Nurturing Satanist

You will need: 1 Right Index Finger (yours); 1 Left Shoe (worn); 1 Accurate Clock; Functioning Salivary Ducts

Instructions: At the stroke of midnight, stand next to hiccupper’s bed, wet right index finger with saliva and draw shape of cross on left shoe. Recite Lord’s Prayer backwards three times.

(Note: also results in summoning of bog imp)

The Cute Little Heart-Breaker

You will need: An open mind

Instructions: Have hiccupper imagine a fox without imagining the fox’s tail.

IMPORTANT: This is very different from the vomit induction trick of imagining a fox without a tail.

The Anonymous Tumbler

You will need: 1 Paper Bag; 1 Grassy Hill

Instructions: Place paper bag over hiccuppers head; Have hiccupper roll down grassy hill

Note: Using a paper bag with a “dizzy face” drawn on it will neither improve nor hinder this method’s results. I repeat: it will not hinder this method’s results.

The Acrid Flavor of Death (AKA The “Needs Salt” Method)

You will need: The ability to discern the center of a graveyard; A graveyard

Instructions: Have hiccupper place dirt collected from the grave nearest a cemetery’s center on his/her tongue.

The Dent in the Breadbox

You will need: A strong right jab

Instructions: Punch hiccupper in the stomach

The Huey Lewis-Endorsed Power of Love Cure

You will need: to be pretty damned certain hiccupper isn’t as lonely as he/she looks.

Instructions: Have hiccupper picture a person of the opposite sex who loves him/her

Caution: May result in existential crisis

Bug Sack

You will need: Live Pill Bugs; Small Sack; Twine

Instructions: Place pill bugs in sack; Using twine, tie sack around hiccuppers neck

Note: Most effective on prom night

The Improvising Satanist

You Will Need: Two Black Candles; Matches or Lighter; 1 Wet Noodle

Instructions: Light both candles; drape noodle between hiccuper’s eyes

(note: also results in summoning of meatball orc)

The Wait, What?! No. I’m Not Doing That. That… That’s… No. Method

You will need: 1 Alligator

Instructions: Have hiccupper rub gator’s belly.

The best thing about secret government research projects is the fun, random codenames. For example – Project Bluebird… Weaponized birds activated by pitching peanut butter-and-seed-coated pinecones into an enemy camp? Not even a little bit. This 1950s CIA program was created to research alternative (generally psychopharmacological) prisoner interrogation techniques, and to create a new breed of puppet spook, whose free will, up to and including his self preservation instinct, was completely suppressed. Most of the experiment was spent administering low dosages of synthetic drugs and chemicals, including heroin, PCP, mescaline, LSD and ether, to unknowing military personnel stationed at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. While the CIA was tangentially interested in the direct effects of the psychotropics and narcotics, their real mission was to study the exploitability of withdrawal-addled soldiers – a goal they accomplished by suddenly ceasing test patients’ regular mickey slips. Of the 7,000 unwitting Project Bluebird participants, 1,000 demonstrated symptoms of epilepsy and clinical mopiness, including suicide attempts and the writing of songs with the word “Blues” in the titles.

(Project Bluebird was later renamed Project Artichoke, a surprisingly apt name that recalls bitter thistles cooked in acrid vinegar water and served up on admittedly delicious pizza, but Satan is the delivery guy and he thinks it’s funny to “forget” to seal the insulated transport bag.)

In 1953, after CIA director Allen Dulles allegedly started bitching and moaning about how many more brain-diddling experiments the government could conduct if they had additional human test subjects, the CIA consolidated all of its varied interrogation research under a singular covert umbrella – the now-infamous MKULTRA. While most folks associate these experiments with LSD research, the MKULTRA project had so many facets and subprograms that its claims of heightened efficiency are dubious. Project QKHILLTOP studied Chinese brainwashing techniques. Subproject 68, operated out of Canada, attempted to chemically erase subjects’ minds (via drug-induced comas) so that scientists could then rewrite the subjects’ personalities based on government specifications. The best, though, both methodologically and fun-codename-wise, was Operation Midnight Climax (yes, that is just what you were looking for, name-seeking high school-aged rock band), in which CIA-compensated hookers lured clients to government safehouses, where the johns underwent LSD dosings and sexual blackmail all in the name of interrogation research.

MKULTRA was shut down in the early 70s, though many believe that contemporary psychological interrogation techniques, such as those employed in Guantanamo Bay, are direct descendents of the CIA’s zany research.

While MKULTRA was chugging along, the U.S. Army, plied as it was on CIA-administered hallucinogens, conducted a wide array of chemical experiments, which didn’t have fun codenames, so whatever. I’ll just rattle them off real quick like. They tested chemical weapon dispersion patterns by blitzing six cities with toxic chemical sprays (I would have called it Project Bandersnatch). They (in cooperation with Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson and Dr. Albert Kligman) injected 70 Holmesburg State Prison inmates with herbicides (I would’ve called this one Project Potpourri Elitism). Additionally, they subjected other Holmesburg prisoners to toxic skin-blistering acids, so that scientists could observe the healing process (me thinks Project Sapphire Dingle).

The important things to get out of all this are a) you’re probably drinking government chemicals right now, but don’t worry… any damage that was going to happen already happened way back in your mom’s uterus when you were sucking whooping cough and DDT through your umbilical cord. It’s probably why coffee smell makes your eyes bleed; b) lots of the experiments detailed in this week’s posts had irrefutably positive results and saved dying babies and whatever so chill out. Christ; c) fun codenames. I’m serious about this. Even it just means re-titling the index cards in your recipe binder or sitting down with your significant other and assigning black ops aliases to your favorite sex positions, you need to apply this to your life.

In which I, Weird Thign Cultural Researcher Matt Finley, add a wholly unnecessary narrative spin to the satisfying, straight-forward conclusion of a film.

Today: Twist Minis

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – As Leatherface does his frustrational chainsaw-swingin’ twirly dance, the film suddenly freezes, the still image of the cannibalistic transvestite slowly pixelating and breaking down into blackness. Something beeps. Suddenly the blackness seems to lift away as we see a POV shot of two strong hands pulling stylish virtual reality glasses away from the screen. The hands belong to a middle-aged man with kind eyes and an “I’m really tired, but I also just drank some delicious hot cocoa” half smile. The camera cuts from the POV shot and we see that the through-the-glasses point of view was that of a sickly adolescent girl in a hospital bed. The man touches her IV-infused hand and says, “See, honey? That’s adulthood. Now do you understand why it’s almost better that you got sick?” The girl nods. Roll credits.

Alien – As the Alien spirals out into space, smash cut to sweat-drenched alien sitting up in bed. An alien next to him stirs and mumbles, “Is something wrong, honey?” The first alien catches its breath and replies, “I just had a nightmare where I was blown out of a spaceship by a horrific alien.” “You know,” says the other alien, “to an alien, you would look like an alien.” Before the first alien can reply, he begins choking and a human baby bursts out of his chest. Acid blood sizzles in the dark air. Smash cut to sweat-drenched predator sitting up in bed. A predator next to him mumbles, “Is something wrong, honey?” “I just had the funniest f***ing dream!” chuckles the first predator. Roll Credits.

Jurassic Park – As the helicopter gracefully banks toward the sunset, the camera tracks back through the aircraft, moving past the passengers and up into the cockpit, where it zooms in on the pilot, who’s a dilophosaurus. It deploys its neck fan. Roll credits.

The Shining – Cut to Grady and the bartender drinking scotch in the ballroom. “Wow.” Says the bartender, “I think that went really well.” Grady frowns pensively and replies, “Yeah… but I’m still not clear on how it’s supposed to make us rich…” The bartender freaks. “Dammit! I knew I forgot something.” He punches the bar top and shouts, “Well, how soon can we get another family in here with an unhinged dad and a kid who has the shining?” Grady shakes his head. “At least a couple months.” “Well… set it up, I guess.” The bartender says, shaking his head, “and this next time… this next we’re gonna get so rich!” They clink glasses. “So rich!” Roll credits.

Historical journeys can be a slog. What can I say? It’s all those damn facts. Even human medical experimentation in America can read a little bit yawny when it’s dragged out in paragraph form. Fortunately, I have no integrity and am, therefore, not above the use of cheap structural gimmicks. It’s like in that song from Mary Poppins about the sugar and the medicine, except the sugar is the structural gimmick and the medicine is the cough syrup that I’m drinking right now. Chim-chim-cheroo.

Time Period: 1940s

Problem: All the darn malaria that’s plaguing U.S. Naval troops in the Pacific theater.

Solution: Bring a bunch of malarial mosquitoes and experimental malaria vaccines to Statesville Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, infect a whole mess of volunteers and then test the vaccines on them.

Negative results: One of the 441 volunteers died from a heart attack (the scientists pinky swore that it totally had, like, nothing to do with malaria); during the Nuremberg trial, sucky Nazis attempted to use the Statesville experiment to defend their malarial infection experiments on… you know… not volunteers… at Dachau.

Positive results: Hearty support from the American public enabled the testing to continue for 29 years. The experiments were instrumental in pioneering modern malaria treatments.

Time Period: 1952

Problem: “Hey, does anyone understand cancer? I just… I don’t get it.” – Chester M. Southam, Sloan-Kettering Institute

Solution: “Okay, okay… I’m gonna go down to Ohio State Prison with a bunch of needles filled with live cancer cells, inject the cells into hundreds of unknowing inmates and then… see what happens, I guess?”

Results: “Nope. I still don’t get it…”

Time Period: 1955

Problem: Is America prepared to deal with biological warfare? The CIA does that hand-tilting “sorta” gesture that people do when they mean “no.”

Solution: U.S. boats off the coast of Tampa Bay, Florida, fire a chunky dose of whooping cough toward the city.

Negative results: Tampa suffers a massive whooping cough epidemic that infects 1,080 citizens, resulting in 12 deaths.

Positive results: The government’s worst fear – a “baker’s dozen” casualty scenario – proves unfounded

Time period: 1956-1957

Problem: Could terrorists attack the country using a swarm of mosquitoes infected with either yellow or Dengue fever?

Solution: Release millions of uninfected mosquitoes in Savannah, Georgia, and Avon Park, Florida, and monitor the insects’ impact and range.

Negative results: Once released, the “uninfected” mosquitoes naturally contracted all sorts of contagious horribleness, leading to outbreaks of typhoid, encephalitis and other miscellaneous fevers. As the diseases spread, Army workers disguised as public health officials tested and photographed suffering citizens. Scientists later admitted that the experiment was a “terrible idea.”

Positive results: Some of the Army guys were allowed to keep their victim cameras.

Time period: 1962

Problem: “Hey, does anyone understand cancer yet? Man, this is frustrating!” – Chester M. Southam, Sloan-Kettering Institute

Solution: “Okay, okay… I’m gonna go down to Brooklyn’s Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital with a bunch of needles filled with live cancer cells, inject the cells into 22 unknowing patients and then… see what happens, I guess?”

Positive result: Southam’s medical license was suspended for a year after the hospital tried to cover up the doctor’s experiment.

Negative result: Two years later, Southam was elected head of the National Cancer Society.

Friday: Matt retreats back to conventional prose when confronted with government-run chemical experiments and psychological torture

Watching the new Wolf Man movie, I couldn’t help but think that maybe it’s a little one sided. Really, though, what can you expect from those liberal Hollywood types? “Ugh! Wolf man! Boo! Hiss! Destroy all wolf men!” Sure, wolf men kill some people and send the local chamber of commerce into a bit of a tizzy, but water slide parks do that, too. Honestly, though, I think our local wolf man is the best thing to happen to this town since they closed down the water slide park. Now I’m not shouting “wolf man for mayor” or anything like that (certainly not here in print), but damned if that hairy virgin murderer hasn’t done his part for our humble village.

Lazy Gypsy Motivator

Before the wolf man came, all the gypsies did was lie around their camp drinking raven’s feather schnapps and selling cursed jewelry that turned pregnant women’s babies into foals. After the wolf man though – when everyone started blaming the gypsies for the wolf man – those shawl-draped reprobates really stepped up! At first, it was just little things, like giving away free horse brushes with the cursed jewelry, but as the wolf attacks persisted and the townsfolk got increasingly grumpy, the gypsies actually started to help out. That one-eyed gypsy with three teeth showed the butcher how to prepare goat meat for soothsaying, and the extra mysterious gypsy (the one without thumbs) taught the town drunk to play a funny little drum. I even heard that the one-eyed gypsy with no teeth called a lightning storm down to set fire to our rival town’s high school. Take that, Ockton Otters! Hawks rule!

Family Bonding Facilitator

Before the wolf man came, evenings were just an excuse for me to hit O’Higgity’s pub, for the kids to hickey their schoolmates comatose out in the woods and for my wife to short out the sewing machine motor with her drunken tears. Now, two nights a month, the streets and the woods become the gruesome playground for a voracious monster that can’t tell skin from blood from bone until he turns human again and has to crap out big chunks of bone. What’s that mean? Family fun night! Now, twice a month, evening is a time for awkward silence and forced conversations about daily banalities; a time for arguing over what movie to watch and losing rock, paper, scissors, and having to sit through “Ghost”; a time for me to know full well the sort of domestic hell storm that will result if I make even one hilarious fart noise during “Ghost,” but not caring and waiting until the big climactic kiss to make the biggest, most hilarious fart noise ever; a time for involuntary sobriety and screaming at each other about who cheated at Uno; a time for reminding ourselves why we stopped spending time together in the first place.

Sheriff Comeuppance

Before the wolf man came, everyone had to put up with the meddling Sheriff and his incessant law enforcement: “You can’t park in a crosswalk!” “Actually, the speed limit does apply to motorcycles!” “You’re under arrest for firing a gun in church!” But then, the wolf man ate the sheriff. After that, the deputy was made acting sheriff, and he was even worse! Everyone knows that no man can enforce the Law of the Lake, but try telling that to acting sheriff Reardon, who somehow got Art Putney sent to jail for beating his wife in the lake. Fortunately, the next month, the wolf man ate him, too. That’s when we started having new moon parties over at O’Higgity’s. Now, every month, the first night after the full moon, everyone gets together at the pub and celebrates the death of the most recent sheriff, who inevitably got elected on an “I’ll stop the wolf man” platform, and who inevitably died failing to stop the wolf man. Except sheriff Porter. He died in a lightning storm while watching his nephew’s football practice in Ockton. Hawks rule!

I don’t think it too spoiler-y to tell you that Scorsese’s atmosphere-drenched “Shutter Island,” set as it is in a fictional 1950s mental institution staffed and populated by more than a few WWII vets, features several conversations about Nazi experiments on concentration camp prisoners. I’m sure you’ve heard about these atrocities – high altitude endurance tests, malarial infection research, sterilization projects, poisoned bullet experiments, etc. If you haven’t, turn on the History channel for two hours and you’ll hear about all of it, plus the Spear of Destiny and a computer simulated hypothetical melee fight between Hitler and a velociraptor.

Japan’s less notorious Unit 731, a black ops Imperial Army unit that, from 1937 to 1945, carried out horrific chemical and biological tests on Chinese and Korean prisoners, can offer an equally horrifying research project, if that’s the kind of thing that floats your pickle. What I want to do, though, is take a whirlwind tour of the creepy, grotesque, weird or otherwise cringe-worthy human medical experimentation that has occurred right here on American asphalt.

Due to the graphic nature of some of the experiments mentioned, we are putting the rest of this puppy AFTER THE JUMP…

(more…)

In the 2005 film “White Noise,” Keegan Connor Tracy’s anxiously stuttering character tells Michael Keaton’s character that Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) is dangerous… “like homemade Ouija boards and… and, and teenage séances on Halloween.” Of course, desperate to hear from his dead wife, the recent widower doesn’t listen, and his obsession with pressing is ear to the mortal coil finds him at the business end of some serious supernatural monkey business. In real life, the supposed spirit voices that force their way through the surface noise of amateur paranormal investigators’ off-brand microcassettes are as likely to corrupt your soul as the hidden Satanic messages that pop-averse evangelists Where’s Waldo out of reversed Beatles’ songs. Even so, if any of you are thinking about doing a little ethereal eavesdropping, maybe should start out small – say, with animals.

As far as I can gather from the half-hearted Internet research I did while watching a movie, animal EVP is just as common as human EVP, but nobody pays it much attention. Despite the frequency of dog and cat noises on their hissy tapes, spook tapers spend a majority of their time decoding the barely audible human voices in hopes of unlocking afterlife secrets. Why shove an earbud halfway into your brain just to listen to the static-laced meows of a fussy, discorporate calico? Still, I thought for sure I’d find a fringe paranormal knitting circle that only chased after puppy EVP or something, but no dice. All I located were some random bits of animal EVP within larger databases of human voice samples, and several EVP FAQ-page references to the commonality of animal sounds.

One website did mention that an Illinoisan EVP enthusiast, who was taping near the sight of the famous 1918 Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train crash, captured the horrific cries of dying circus animals. (I can neither corroborate the existence of this alleged recording, nor whether any animals even died in the crash.) Meanwhile, some folks claim that, in spirit form, animals can speak in human tongues. In her book “Phantom Felines and Other Ghostly Animals,” Gerina Dunwich explains that, while most animal ghosts ought to be approached with the same baby talk and kissy noises as their still-breathing kith, she has heard stories of “ghost animals speaking to the living in human voice – either audibly or telepathically.” If that’s the case, then half-garbled EVP of people saying “Hello,” or something… something… “Randy”… something, are just as likely to be messages from deceased house pets as they are the post-mortem orations of dearly departed neighbors.

As for all the Internet EVP nuts – you’d think that people so obsessed with the nature of the beyond would be more curious about the implications of animal ghost chatter; after all, if in fact, EVP is real-time magnetic field-enabled communication with former earthlings now residing in some nether-dimension (as many EVP fanatics believe), the notion that other living things likewise transform and relocate is pretty heavy, especially in terms of its broader implications regarding the spiritual identity of man. On the other hand, I also found some enthusiastically described EVP of trains. I guess if hopper cars transubstantiate, anything is fair game.

One movie. Five people, living or dead, at the screening. Who and why?

Today’s screening: “Masque of the Red Death”

One of eight gloriously lurid Poe adaptations directed by American B-movie auteur Roger Corman, this colorful tale of pestilence, corruption and Satanism, released in 1964, loosely adapts and combines Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories “The Masque of the Red Death” and “Hop-Toad.” Essentially, the sinister Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) joyfully tortures a village full of long-suffering peasants while hosting an elaborate, hedonistic costume ball for fringe members of the aristocracy, who are seeking shelter from a deadly bleeding disease that’s sweeping the countryside.

Anton LaVey (1930-1997), Founder – The Church of Satan

A mere two years after Vincent Price’s turn as the Satanist Prospero, Anton LaVey, already known around San Francisco for his occult lectures and paranormal research, founded the Church of Satan. Coincidence? Rather than have LaVey expound upon his best known works, “The Satanic Bible” and “The Satanic Rituals,” this film should spur some conversation about his lesser-known books, “The Satanic Chef” and “Satanic Jokes for Goateed Folks.”

Howard Zinn (1922-2010), Political Scientist

Sure, the highly controversial and recently deceased socialist-leaning populist historiographer probably hasn’t even gotten a chance to ghost flush the toilets at “The Weekly Standard,” but I can’t leave him out of this screening. Corman’s portrayal of Prospero’s relationship with the peasants – from the indiscriminate killing to the kidnapping of virgins in the name of forced Satanic conversion – plays out like a series of early scenes from the hypothetical “A People’s History of Europe.” Even if Zinny finds the socially just ending to be insultingly unrealistic, it’ll be worth it just to hear him reminisce about past outrages, present iniquities and the drinking game he played with Noam Chomsky where they watched “24” and solemnly took a shot every time a character’s human rights were violated.

Edgar Allen Poe, (1809-1849), Author

Obviously, Poe should get a chance to watch Corman’s adaptation of his classic story. And, if there’s time, “Wall-E.”

C.J. Peters (1940- ), Field Virologist

Famous for helping to control epidemics of deadly hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola and Hanta Virus (the book “Hot Zone” and the film “Outbreak” were inspired by his research and field work), Peters could provide speculative scientific insight on the titular “red death,” a fictional hemorrhagic fever that spreads rapidly via man-sized crimson-shrouded party crasher. Questions for Peters could include, “generally, what’s the mortality rate of a virus like this?” and “is actual Ebola as monochromatic in its wardrobe selections?”

Aeschylus (?525 BC- 456 BC), Playwright

Though best known for writing stage adaptations of mythological tragedies (“Agamemnon,” etc.), Aeschylus’ oldest existing play, “The Persians,” not only dramatizes the then-recent fall of the Persian Empire, but also opens with what is often credited as the first Western example of a performed dream sequence. As such, Corman’s love of psychedelic dream sequences, as evidenced by Prospero’s mistress’ emerald-tinted descent into Satanic allegiance, owes something to the ancient playwright… and Aeschylus is here to collect (I imagine this as the pilot episode of a series called “Aeschylus Collects,” in which Aeschylus is portrayed as a broken man, displaced in time, with 1,000 lost hopes and 1 gun that shoots nets.)

*On a more serious note – if you haven’t seen Corman’s Poe adaptations, you’re a wiener.

If there’s an educational takeaway from the story of David Berkowitz – New York’s notorious trigger happy killer who claimed to receive murderous orders from his neighbor’s Labrador retriever – it’s “don’t listen to talking animals.” Or maybe “only listen to talking animals if the animals are horses and they’re explaining that, for them, horse races are basically set up like the WWE, with good horse characters and evil horse characters, and if you help them write the scripts, you’ll know in advance who’s going to win each race.” I wasn’t always so cynical regarding this topic. As a child, I was fascinated when my parents told me about the European superstition that Christmas Eve (technically, 12 am Christmas morning) finds animals imbued with the ability to speak. In fact, if our cat had sidled up to me and said “Yo, Matty, kill me some folks, would ya? I love you!” I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t have at least gone downstairs and selected a knife. Probably even the biggest knife. But not anymore.

Like many early European Christmas traditions, it’s difficult to trace the talking animal thing back to any definitive Christian origin (because it’s pagan as f***). According to Christian bloggers, the temporary gift of gab is god’s annual thanks to all animals because several animals were present for Jesus’ birth. I’m gonna be honest, god – kinda feels like you’re reachin’ there. What’s really crazy, though, is that, despite the legend’s seemingly holy origins, Europeans also believed that it was never good to listen to the speaking animals (probably because it’s pagan as f***). My favorite story re: talking animals – don’t listen to them! comes from the German Alps:

A farmer was so curious to hear what his two horses might say (probably he was hoping for the WWE thing) that he decided, against all rational thought, to listen in on their holiday jabberjawing. So, come Christmas Eve, he hid in the rafters of his barn and eagerly awaited the stroke of midnight, upon which one horse suddenly turned to the other. “We shall have hard work to do this week,” said the horse. “Yes. The farmer’s servant is heavy,” answered the other. “And the way to the churchyard is long and steep,” replied the first. The farmer was baffled by the conversation until, later that week, his servant died suddenly. The horses were then needed to carry the man to his grave.

There are other, more predictable tales in which mistreated animals use their speech to fatally trick abusive owners; there are even kids’ stories where house pets are all grins and giggles and psyched about Jesus. But that horse story… utterly chilling. The old Christian view was that it was god’s intention for the animals to share the gift amongst one another, but not with people – animals have strange and secret knowledge (bordering on pagan as f*** occult power) not intended for human ears. As in the horse story, to eavesdrop on their whisperings is to receive startling insight into the dark heart of a natural mysticism from which humans, in civilizing, became unknowingly disconnected.

All inevitable questions (Is the significance of the gift simply to offer lower beings the power of human [read: higher] language? If so, do non-domesticated animals – animals that don’t willingly cede to man’s dominion – really even give a care?) aside, the superstition is another interesting example of how, in the same way that the architecture of Rome was defined by the heathen network of pagan shrines that compose its foundations, Christian beliefs are pasted to a skeleton of solstice orgies and magic animals.