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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_to_Hell] | [TOKENS: 912] |
Contents Well to Hell The "Well to Hell", also known as the "Siberian hell sounds", is an urban legend regarding a putative borehole in the Siberian region of Russia, which was purportedly drilled so deep that it broke through into Hell. It was first attested in English as a 1989 broadcast by an American domestic TV broadcaster, the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Legend and basis The legend holds that a team of Soviet engineers purportedly led by an individual named "Mr. Azakov" in an unnamed place in Siberia had drilled a hole that was 14.4 km (9 miles) deep before breaking through to a cavity. Intrigued by this unexpected discovery, they lowered an extremely heat-tolerant microphone, along with other sensory equipment, into the well. The temperature deep within was 1,000 °C (1,800 °F), heat from a chamber of fire from which screaming could be heard. The Soviet Union had, in fact, drilled a hole more than 12 km (7.5 miles) deep, the Kola Superdeep Borehole, located not in Siberia but on the Kola Peninsula, which shares borders with Norway and Finland. Upon reaching the depth of 12,262 m (40,230 feet) in 1989, geological anomalies were found, although they reported no supernatural encounters. The recording of "tormented screams" was later found to be looped together from various sound effects, sometimes identified as the soundtrack of the 1972 movie Baron Blood. Propagation The story was reported to first have been published by the Finnish newspaper Ammennusastia, a journal published by a group of Pentecostal Christians from Leväsjoki [wd], a village in the municipality of Siikainen in Western Finland. Rich Buhler, who interviewed the editors, found that the story had been based on recollections of a letter printed in the feature section of a newspaper called Etelä Suomen (possibly the Etelä-Suomen Sanomat). When contacting the letter's author, Buhler found that he had drawn from a story appearing in a Finnish Christian newsletter named Vaeltajat, which had printed the story in July 1989. The newsletter's editor claimed that its origin had been a newsletter called Jewels of Jericho, published by a group of Messianic Jews in California. Here, Buhler stopped tracing the origins any further. American tabloids soon ran the story, and sound files began appearing on various sites across the Internet. Sensational retellings of the legend can be found on YouTube, usually featuring the aforementioned Baron Blood sound effects. The story eventually made its way to the American Christian Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), which broadcast it on the network, claiming it to be proof of the literal existence of Hell. Åge Rendalen, a Norwegian teacher, heard the story on TBN while visiting the United States. Disgusted with what he perceived to be mass gullibility, Rendalen decided to augment the tale at TBN's expense. Rendalen wrote to the network, originally claiming that he disbelieved the tale but, upon his return to Norway, supposedly read a factual account of the story. According to Rendalen, the story claimed not only that the cursed well was real, but that a bat-like apparition (a common pictorial representation of demons, such as in Michelangelo's The Torment of Saint Anthony or the more recent Bat Boy by Weekly World News) had risen out of it before blazing a trail across the Russian sky. To perpetuate his hoax, Rendalen deliberately mistranslated a trivial Norwegian article about a local building inspector into the story, and submitted both the original Norwegian article and the English "translation" to TBN. Rendalen also included his real name, phone number, and address, as well as those of a pastor friend who knew about the hoax and had agreed to expose it to anyone who called seeking verification. However, TBN did nothing to verify Rendalen's claims, and aired the story as proof of the validity of the original story. Alternative versions Since its publicity, many alternative versions of the Well to Hell story have been published. In 1992, the U.S. tabloid Weekly World News published an alternative version of the story, which was set in Alaska where three miners were killed after Satan came roaring out of Hell. See also References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantinos_Koukidis] | [TOKENS: 845] |
Contents Konstantinos Koukidis The name Konstantinos Koukidis (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Κουκίδης) is used to refer to the alleged Greek Evzone or member of the National Youth Organisation who was on flag guard duty on 27 April 1941 at the Acropolis of Athens, the day Wehrmacht forces entered Athens and began the Axis occupation of Greece. After the first Germans climbed up the Acropolis, an officer ordered him to surrender, give up the Greek flag, and raise the Nazi swastika flag in its place. Koukidis instead supposedly chose to stay loyal to his duty by hauling down the flag, wrapping it around his body, and jumping from the Acropolis rock to his death. The first correspondence about the event occurred on 9 May 1941, and it since has been sporadically mentioned through eye witnesses and personal memoirs of supposed friends of Koukidis, mostly every Ohi Day. Despite that, in October 2000, then-mayor of Athens Dimitris Avramopoulos installed a commemorative plaque near the spot which the event supposedly took place, although he stated that there were no specific documentary evidence on Koukidis or his act, which modern historiography considers to be apocryphal. The narrative According to popular narrative, Koukidis was a 17-year-old Evzone who had guard duty at the Acropolis on 27 April 1941, the day which the Wehrmacht entered Athens. According to another version, he was a member of the National Youth Organisation. Nazis ordered him to lower the Greek flag and to raise the Nazi flag. Koukidis did not obey, lowered the Greek flag and, covering himself with the flag, committed suicide from the Acropolis. References to the event The first reference to the event took place on 9 May 1941, by the British newspaper Daily Mail. Archbishop of Athens Crysanthus also mentioned the event in his memoirs, as well as historian and SOE agent Nicholas Hammond in his published diary in 1972. The entire story had been forgotten until 1982, when authors Kostas Chatzipateras and Maria Fafaliou mentioned Koukidis in their book Memoirs 40-41. In 1989, Greek Holocaust denier Konstantinos Plevris mentioned that the event is true and claimed that he had "the entire folder [of Koukidis and the event] from the Hellenic Army General Staff" in his possession. In 1994, a book released by Communist Party of Greece, Έπεσαν για τη ζωή (They Died for Life), mentioned the alleged sacrifice. Modern views The head of the Hellenic Army General Staff History Department, Lt. General Ioannis Kakoudakis, in an interview for ET1 state television in 2000, and the military history magazine Πόλεμος και Ιστορία in 2001 mentioned that, after research took place in the archives of the Greek Armed Forces as well as in Greek public institutions, no evidence of Koukidis had been found. The historian Hagen Fleischer [de] claimed that the entire story about Koukidis traces its roots to a joke that was circulating the day the Wehrmacht entered Athens, and that the story had been publicized as a way to highlight heroes that did not become involved in internecine conflicts (i.e. Aris Velouchiotis). Public memory The municipality of Athens, under mayor Dimitris Avramopoulos, erected in 2000 a commemorative plaque at the foot of the Acropolis, as well as in the Presidential Guard barracks. In his speech during the revelation of the monument, Avramopoulos mentioned that Koukidis is honored despite the fact that historical research does not lend credence to the actual existence of him or his supposed deed, and that the more important question is if the Greeks of today want him to exist. References Sources See also |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Corpse_Factory] | [TOKENS: 3678] |
Contents German Corpse Factory The German Corpse Factory or Kadaververwertungsanstalt (literally "Carcass-Utilization Factory"), also sometimes called the "German Corpse-Rendering Works" or "Tallow Factory" was a recurring work of atrocity propaganda among the Allies of World War I, describing the German Empire's supposed use of human corpses in fat rendering during World War I. In the postwar years, investigations in Britain and France revealed that these stories were false. According to a typical version of the story, the Kadaververwertungsanstalt was a special installation operated by the Germans in which, due to fat product scarcety amid the allied blockade, German battlefield corpses were rendered down for fat, which was then used to manufacture nitroglycerine, candles, lubricants, and even boot dubbin. It was supposedly operated behind the front lines by the DAVG — Deutsche Abfall-Verwertungs Gesellschaft ("German Waste Utilization Company"). Historian Piers Brendon has called it "the most appalling atrocity story" of World War I, while journalist Phillip Knightley has called it "the most popular atrocity story of the war." After the war, John Charteris, the former Chief of Intelligence at the British Expeditionary Force, allegedly stated in a speech that he had invented the story for propaganda purposes, with the principal aim of getting the Chinese to join the war against Germany. Recent scholars do not credit the claim that Charteris created the story. Propaganda historian Randal Marlin says "the real source for the story is to be found in the pages of the Northcliffe press", referring to newspapers owned by Lord Northcliffe. Adrian Gregory presumes that the story originated from rumours that had been circulating for years, and that it was not "invented" by any individual: "The corpse-rendering factory was not the invention of a diabolical propagandist; it was a popular folktale, an 'urban myth', which had been circulated for months before it received any official notice." History Rumours that the Germans used the bodies of their soldiers to create fat appear to have been circulating by 1915. Cynthia Asquith noted in her diary on 16 June 1915: “We discussed the rumour that the Germans utilise even their corpses by converting them into glycerine with the by-product of soap.” Such stories also appeared in the American press in 1915 and 1916. The French press also took it up in Le Gaulois, in February, 1916. In 1916 a book of cartoons by Louis Raemaekers was published. One depicted bodies of German soldiers being loaded onto a cart in neatly packaged batches. This was accompanied with a comment written by Horace Vachell: “I am told by an eminent chemist that six pounds of glycerine can be extracted from the corpse of a fairly well nourished Hun... These unfortunates, when alive, were driven ruthlessly to inevitable slaughter. They are sent as ruthlessly to the blast furnaces. One million dead men are resolved into six million pounds of glycerine." A later cartoon by Bruce Bairnsfather also referred to the rumour, depicting a German munitions worker looking at a can of glycerine and saying "Alas! My poor Brother!" (parodying a well-known advertisement for Bovril). By 1917 the British and their allies were hoping to bring China into the war against Germany. On 26 February 1917 the English-language North-China Daily News published a story that the Chinese President Feng Guozhang had been horrified by Admiral Paul von Hintze's attempts to impress him when the "Admiral triumphantly stated that they were extracting glycerine out of dead soldiers!". The story was picked up by other papers. In all these cases the story was told as rumour, or as something heard from people supposed to be 'in the know'. It was not presented as documented fact. The first English language account of a real and locatable Kadaververwertungsanstalt appeared in the 16 April 1917 issue of The Times of London. In a short piece at the foot of its "Through German Eyes" review of the German press, it quoted from a recent issue of the German newspaper Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger a very brief story by reporter Karl Rosner of only 59 words in length, which described the bad smell coming from a "Kadaver" rendering factory, making no reference to the corpses being human. The following day, 17 April 1917, the story was repeated more prominently in editions of The Times and Daily Mail (both owned by Lord Northcliffe at the time), The Times running it under the title Germans and their Dead, in the context of a 500-plus word story which the editorial introduction stated came from the 10 April edition of the Belgian newspaper l'Indépendance Belge published in England, which in turn had received it from La Belgique, another Belgian newspaper published in Leiden, The Netherlands. The Belgian account stated specifically that the bodies were those of soldiers and interpreted the word "kadaver" as a reference to human corpses. The story described how corpses arrived by rail at the factory, which was placed "deep in forest country" and surrounded by an electrified fence, and how they were rendered for their fats which were then further processed into stearin (a form of tallow). It went on to claim that this was then used to make soap, or refined into an oil "of yellowish brown colour". The supposedly incriminating passage in the original German article was translated in the following words: We pass through Evergnicourt. There is a dull smell in the air, as if lime were being burnt. We are passing the great Corpse Utilization Establishment (Kadaververwertungsanstalt) of this Army Group. The fat that is won here is turned into lubricating oils, and everything else is ground down in the bones mill into a powder, which is used for mixing with pigs' food and as manure. A debate followed in the pages of The Times and other papers. The Times stated that it had received a number of letters "questioning the translation of the German word Kadaver, and suggesting that it is not used of human bodies. As to this, the best authorities are agreed that it is also used of the bodies of animals." Letters were also received confirming the story from Belgian and Dutch sources and later from Romania.[citation needed] The New York Times reported on 20 April that the article was being credited by all the French newspapers with the exception of the Paris-Midi, which preferred to believe that the corpses in question were those of animals rather than humans. The New York Times itself did not credit the story, pointing out that it appeared in early April and that German newspapers traditionally indulged in April Fools' Day pranks, and also that the expression "Kadaver" was not employed in current German usage to mean a human corpse, the word "Leichnam" being used instead. The only exception was corpses used for dissection—cadavers.[citation needed] On 25 April the weekly British humorous magazine Punch printed a cartoon entitled "Cannon-Fodder—and After," which showed the Kaiser and a German recruit. Pointing out of a window at a factory with smoking chimneys and the sign "Kadaververwertungs[anstalt]," the Kaiser tells the young man: "And don't forget that your Kaiser will find a use for you—alive or dead." On 30 April the story was raised in the House of Commons, and the government declined to endorse it. Lord Robert Cecil declared that he had no information beyond newspaper reports. He added that, "in view of other actions by German military authorities, there is nothing incredible in the present charge against them." However, the government, he said, had neither the responsibility nor the resources to investigate the allegations. In the months that followed, the account of the Kadaververwertungsanstalt circulated worldwide, but never expanded beyond the account printed in The Times; no eyewitnesses ever appeared, and the story was never enlarged or amplified. Some individuals within the government nonetheless hoped to exploit the story, and Charles Masterman, director of the War Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House, was asked to prepare a short pamphlet. This was never published, however. Masterman and his mentor, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, never took the story seriously.[citation needed] An undated anonymous pamphlet entitled A 'corpse-conversion' Factory: A Peep Behind the German Lines was published by Darling & Son, probably around this time in 1917. A month later, The Times revived the rumour by publishing a captured German Army order that made reference to a Kadaver factory. It was issued by the VsdOK, which The Times interpreted as Verordnungs-Stelle ("instructions department"). The Frankfurter Zeitung, however, insisted that it stood for Veterinar-Station (veterinary station). The Foreign Office agreed that order could only be referring to "the carcasses of horses." Paul Fussell has also suggested that this may have been a deliberate British mistranslation of the phrase Kadaver Anstalt on a captured German order that all available animal remains be sent to an installation to be reduced to tallow. Postwar claims On 20 October 1925, the New York Times reported on a speech given by Brigadier General John Charteris at the National Arts Club the previous evening. Charteris was then a Conservative MP for Glasgow, but had served as Chief of Army Intelligence for part of the war. According to the Times, the brigadier told his audience that he had invented the cadaver-factory story as a way of turning the Chinese against the Germans, and he had transposed the captions of two photographs that came into his possession, one showing dead soldiers being removed by train for funerals, the second showing a train car bearing horses to be processed for fertiliser. A subordinate had suggested forging a diary of a German soldier to verify the accusation, but Charteris vetoed the idea. On his return to the UK, Charteris unequivocally denied the New York Times' report in a statement to The Times, saying that he was only repeating speculation that had already been published in the 1924 book These Eventful Years: The Twentieth Century In The Making. This referred to an essay by Bertrand Russell, in which Russell asserted that, Any fact which had a propaganda value was seized upon, not always with strict regard for truth. For example, worldwide publicity was given to the statement that the Germans boiled down human corpses in order to extract from them gelatine and other useful substances. This story was widely used in China when that country's participation was desired, because it was hoped that it would shock the well-known Chinese reverence for the dead... The story was set going cynically by one of the employees in the British propaganda department, a man with a good knowledge of German, perfectly well aware that "Kadaver" means "carcase," not "corpse,"... Charteris stated that he had merely repeated Russell's speculations, adding the extra information about the proposed fake diary: Certain suggestions and speculations as regards the origins of the Kadaver story, which have already been published in These Eventful Years (British Encyclopedia Press) and elsewhere, which I repeated, are, doubtless unintentionally, but nevertheless unfortunately, turned into definite statements of fact and attributed to me. Lest there should still be any doubt, let me say that I neither invented the Kadaver story nor did I alter the captions in any photographs, nor did I use faked material for propaganda purposes. The allegations that I did so are not only incorrect but absurd, as propaganda was in no way under G.H.Q. France, where I had charge of the Intelligence Services. I should be as interested as the general public to know what was the true origin of the Kadaver story. G.H.Q. France only came in when a fictitious diary supporting the Kadaver story was submitted. When this diary was discovered to be fictitious, it was at once rejected. The question was once again raised in Parliament, and Sir Laming Worthington-Evans said that the story that the Germans had set up a factory for the conversion of dead bodies first appeared on 10 April 1917, in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, and in the Belgian newspapers l'Independance Belge and La Belgique.[citation needed] Sir Austen Chamberlain finally established that the British government accepted that the story was untrue, when in a reply in Parliament on 2 December 1925 he said that the German Chancellor had authorised him to say on the authority of the German government, that there was never any foundation for the story, and that he accepted the denial on behalf of His Majesty's Government.[citation needed] The claim that Charteris invented the story to sway the opinion of the Chinese against the Germans was given wide circulation in Lord Arthur Ponsonby's highly influential book, Falsehood in War-Time, which examined, according to its subtitle, an "Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout the Nations During the Great War". In his 1931 book Spreading Germs of Hate, pro-Nazi writer George Sylvester Viereck also insisted that Charteris had originated the story: The explanation was vouchsafed by General Charteris himself in 1926 [sic], at a dinner at the National Arts Club, New York City. It met with diplomatic denial later on, but is generally accepted. Charteris's alleged 1925 comments later gave Adolf Hitler rhetorical ammunition to portray the British as liars who would invent imaginary war crimes. The widespread belief that the Kadaververwertungsanstalt had been invented as propaganda had an adverse effect during World War II on rumours emerging about the Holocaust. One of the earliest reports in September 1942, known as the "Sternbuch cable" stated that the Germans were "bestially murdering about one hundred thousand Jews" in Warsaw and that "from the corpses of the murdered, soap and artificial fertilizers are produced". Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, noted that these reports were rather too similar to "stories of employment of human corpses during the last war for the manufacture of fat which was a grotesque lie." Likewise, The Christian Century commented that "The parallel between this story and the ‘corpse factory’ atrocity tale of the First World War is too striking to be overlooked.” German scholar Joachim Neander notes that "There can be no doubt that the reported commercial use of the corpses of the murdered Jews undermined the credibility of the news coming from Poland and delayed action that might have rescued many Jewish lives." Recent scholarship Modern scholarship supports the view that the story arose from rumours circulating among troops and civilians in Belgium, and was not an invention of the British propaganda machine. It moved from rumour to apparent "fact" after the report in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger appeared about a real cadaver-processing factory. The ambiguous wording of the report allowed Belgian and British newspapers to interpret it as proof of the rumours that human corpses were used. Phillip Knightley says that Charteris may have concocted the claim that he invented the story in order to impress his audience, not realising a reporter was present. Randal Marlin says that Charteris's claim to have invented the story is "demonstrably false" in a number of details. However, it is possible that a fake diary was created but never used. Nevertheless, this diary, which Charteris claimed to still exist “in the war museum in London”, has never been found. It is also possible that Charteris suggested that the story would be useful propaganda in China, and that he created a miscaptioned photograph to be sent to the Chinese, but again there is no evidence of this. Adrian Gregory is highly critical of Lord Ponsonby's account in Falsehood in War-Time, arguing that the story, like many other anti-German atrocity tales, originated with ordinary soldiers and members of the public: “the process was bottom-up more than top-down,” and that in most of the false atrocity stories “the public were misleading the press”, rather than a sinister press propaganda machine deceiving an innocent public. Joachim Neander says that the process was more like a "feedback loop" in which plausible stories were picked up and used by propagandists such as Charteris: "Charteris and his office most probably did not have a part in creating the 'Corpse factory' story. It can, however, be safely assumed that they were actively involved in its spreading." Furthermore, the story would have remained little more than rumour and tittle-tattle if it had not been taken up by respectable newspapers such as The Times in 1917. Israeli writer Shimon Rubinstein suggested in 1987 that it was possible that the story of the corpse factory was true, but that Charteris wished to discredit it in order to foster harmonious relations with post-war Germany after the 1925 Treaty of Locarno. Rubinstein posited that such factories were “possible pilot-plants for the extermination centers the Nazis built during World War II.” Joachim Neander has commented that the absence of any reliable evidence that the “Corpse factory” establishments actually existed, completely undermines Rubinstein’s claims. Similar claims in later conflicts During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, a claim emerged in 2023 that the Russian military was concealing its losses with a similar method of packing human corpses into meat, often referred to as "mobik meat cubes". These claims were never able to be verified and have since been dismissed as another case of disinformation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. See also Notes |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Mordake] | [TOKENS: 1095] |
Contents Edward Mordake Edward Mordake (sometimes spelled Mordrake) is the apocryphal subject of an urban legend who was born in the 19th century as the heir to an English peerage with a face at the back of his head. According to legend, the face could whisper, laugh or cry. Mordake repeatedly begged doctors to remove it, claiming it whispered bad things to him at night. Mordake died by suicide at the age of 23. Description An account described Mordake's figure as one with "remarkable grace" and with a face similar to that of an Antinous. The second face on the back of Mordake's head — supposedly female — reportedly had a pair of eyes and a mouth that drooled. The duplicate face could not see, eat, or speak, but was said to "sneer while Mordake was happy" and "smile while Mordake was weeping". According to legend, Mordake repeatedly begged doctors to have his "demon face" removed, claiming that at night it whispered things that "one would only speak about in Hell", but no doctor would attempt it. This then led to Mordake secluding himself in a room before deciding to take his own life at the age of 23. An account of Mordake's story was detailed in Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine: One of the weirdest, as well as the most melancholy stories of human deformity, is that of Edward Mordake, said to have been heir to one of the noblest peerages in England. however, He never claimed the title, and committed suicide in his twenty-second year. He lived his life in complete seclusion, refusing the visits even of the members of his own family. He was a young man of fine attainments, a profound scholar, and a musician of rare ability. His figure was remarkable for its grace, and his face — that is to say, his natural face — was that of an Antinous. But upon the back of his head was another face, that of a beautiful girl, "lovely as a dream, hideous as a devil." The female face was a mere mask, "occupying only a small portion of the posterior part of the skull, yet exhibiting every sign of intelligence, of a malignant sort, however." It would be seen to smile and sneer while Mordake was weeping. The eyes would follow the movements of the spectator, and the lips "would gibber without ceasing." No voice was audible, but Mordake avers that he was kept from his rest at night by the hateful whispers of his "devil twin", as he called it, "which never sleeps, but talks to me forever of such things as they only speak of in Hell. No imagination can conceive the dreadful temptations it sets before me. For some unforgiven wickedness of my forefathers, I am knit to this fiend — for a fiend it surely is. I beg and beseech you to crush it out of human semblance, even if I die for it." Such were the words of the hapless Mordake to Manvers and Treadwell, his physicians. In spite of careful watching, he managed to procure poison, whereof he died, leaving a letter requesting that the "demon face" might be destroyed before his burial, "lest it continues its dreadful whisperings in my grave." At his own request, he was interred in a waste place, without stone or legend to mark his grave. Earliest reference The first known description of Mordake is found in an 1895 article in The Boston Post authored by fiction writer Charles Lotin Hildreth. The article describes a number of cases of what Hildreth refers to as "human freaks", including a woman who had the tail of a fish, a man with the body of a spider, a man who was half-crab, and Edward Mordake. Hildreth claimed to have found these cases described in old reports of the "Royal Scientific Society". According to a 2021 article in USA Today, the only known "Royal Scientific Society" was founded in 1970 by Jordanian monarchs. Nothing could be found in the records of the similarly named Royal Society of London. Like many publications of the time, Hildreth's article was not factual, and was likely published by the newspaper to increase reader interest. Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine The 1896 medical encyclopedia Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, co-authored by Dr. George M. Gould and Dr. David L. Pyle, included an account of Mordake. The account was copied directly from Hildreth's article, and was credited only to a "lay source". The encyclopedia described the basic morphology of Mordake's condition, but it provided no medical diagnosis for the rare deformity. An explanation for the birth defect may have been a form of craniopagus parasiticus (a parasitic twin head with an undeveloped body), a form of diprosopus (bifurcated craniofacial duplication), or an extreme form of parasitic twin (an unequal conjoined twin). See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spider_Bite] | [TOKENS: 896] |
Contents The Spider Bite The Spider Bite or The Red Spot is a modern urban legend that emerged in England during the 1970s. The legend features a young woman from a frigid, northern location (England, New York City, etc.), who is on vacation abroad in a warm southern location (Mexico, etc.). While sunbathing on the beach, she is bitten on the cheek by a spider. The bite swells into a large boil and she rushes home to seek medical treatment. She finds a doctor to lance the boil, causing hundreds of tiny spiders to emerge. She is driven insane by the shock. History The legend of The Spider Bite emerged as a modern legend in Europe in the late 1970s, but it echoes earlier manifestations of the bosom-serpent story type, where all types of creatures enter the body and sometimes reproduce there. Modern folklorists adopted the term bosom-serpent from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1843 short story, "Egotism, or, the Bosom Serpent". The term is now used to generalize other legends in which living creatures enter the human body. In bosom-serpent type legends, the creatures usually have to be removed surgically, but sometimes they depart on their own, or even burst from the skin. Interpretations This urban legend provides a social commentary about the perception of the people who consider southern locales to be less clean, and more dangerous than their own home turf. Spiders are loathed by many people, but venomous, hairy, or especially large spiders make frequent appearances in legends. Spiders in urban legends have often taken cover in a variety of items ranging from cactus plants and food, to hairdos and within the human body, so it is natural to have a fear of invasion. Bengt af Klintberg's work in urban legends elaborates and explains that as a consequence of the absence of spiders in the modern urban environment, they have now assumed mythical proportions in our narrative tradition. Analysts have also suggested that bosom-serpent legends may represent pregnancy fears or fantasies. Variations In other versions, a young girl is asleep while a spider crawls across her face and rests on her cheek for a few moments. The next morning, she asks her mother about the red spot on her cheek and the mother responds, "It looks like a spider bite. It will go away, just don't scratch it." As time passes, the spot grows into a small boil. She confronts her mother again and complains that it is getting larger and that it's sore. The mother replies, "That happens sometimes, it's coming to a head." More days pass and the girl complains that it hurts and is unsightly. Finally concerned that it might be infected, the mother agrees to take her to a doctor, but he is not available until the next day. In order to soothe herself that evening, the girl takes a bath. As she soaks, the boil bursts and releases a swarm of baby spiders into the water from the eggs that the mother had laid. In telling the story, there are versions that are set in one's own country instead of being abroad (e.g., a Midwestern woman who is bitten in California). Usually, when the story is told to others, the location of the incident is quite specific. In popular culture In the 2005 horror film Urban Legends: Bloody Mary, the character Heather Thompson meets a gruesome fate following a spider bite. Mistaking the bite for a simple pimple, she pops it, unleashing a swarm of spiders that crawl out from the wound. Overcome with terror, Heather frantically tries to rid herself of the arachnids by peeling at her skin. In her panic, she crashes into a mirror, shattering the glass. The shards embed into her face. Desperate and delirious, Heather continues to tear at her skin, eventually peeling off her face before succumbing to her injuries In the 2019 horror film Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark, the character Ruth is subject to a spider bite and hospitalized (then sent to a mental hospital). In this version her cheek swells from a red spot and turns to a large boil then releasing the spiders after she tries to investigate the spot. This transformation being relatively fast over the course of a day with the spiders clawing their way out of her cheek during the evening. References Sources See also |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephants%27_graveyard] | [TOKENS: 520] |
Contents Elephants' graveyard An elephants' graveyard (also called elephant graveyard, elephant's graveyard, or elephants' cemetery) is a place where, according to legend, old elephants instinctively direct themselves when they reach a certain age. According to this legend, these elephants would then die there alone, far from the group. However, there is no evidence in support of the existence of the elephants' graveyard. Origin Several theories have been proposed to explain the origin of this myth. One theory involves people finding groups of elephant skeletons together, or observing old elephants and skeletons in the same habitat. Others suggest the term may spring from group die-offs, such as one excavated in Saxony-Anhalt, which had 27 Palaeoloxodon antiquus skeletons. In that particular case, the tusks of the skeletons were missing, which indicated either hunters killed a group of elephants in one spot, or else opportunistic scavengers removed the tusks from a natural die-off.[citation needed] Other theories focus on elephant behavior during lean times, suggesting starving or elderly elephants who have worn their teeth down to a point that they can no longer chew tougher foods gather in places where finding food is easier, and subsequently die there. Prolific elephant hunter Walter "Karamojo" Bell discounted the idea of the elephant's graveyard, stating that bones and "tusks were still lying about in the bush where they had lain for years". Popular culture The idea of an elephant graveyard first appeared in popular culture with Sir Rider Haggard's The Ivory Child (1916), the twelfth of the eighteen Allan Quatermain adventures. The idea of a graveyard for elephants was popularized in films such as Trader Horn and MGM's Tarzan films, in which groups of greedy explorers attempt to locate the elephants' graveyard, on the fictional Mutia Escarpment, in search of its riches of ivory. Disney's 1994 animated musical film The Lion King has a reference to this motif, as well as its musical adaptation, video game adaptation, and the 2019 remake of the film. In the video game Tarzan: Untamed, Tantor accidentally leads hunters to the Elephant Graveyard where they are buried after Tarzan beats them. Derivative meanings Additionally the term "elephants' graveyard" has been deliberately used in a symbolic fashion to refer to specific paleontological sites, such as the elephant-fossil deposit that René Jeannel, professor at the French National Museum of Natural History, discovered during a Kenya & Ethiopia expedition in 1932. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_is_dead] | [TOKENS: 4990] |
Contents Paul is dead "Paul is dead" is an urban legend and conspiracy theory alleging that English musician Paul McCartney of the Beatles died in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a look-alike. The rumour began circulating in 1966, gaining broad popularity in September 1969 following reports on American college campuses. According to the theory, McCartney died in a car crash, and, to spare the public from grief, the surviving Beatles, aided by Britain's MI5, replaced him with a McCartney look-alike, subsequently communicating this secret through subtle details of their albums. Proponents perceived clues among elements of Beatles songs and cover artwork; clue-hunting proved infectious, and by October 1969 had become an international phenomenon. Rumours declined after Life published an interview with McCartney in November 1969. The phenomenon was the subject of analysis in the fields of sociology, psychology and communications during the 1970s. McCartney parodied the hoax with the title and cover art of his 1993 live album, Paul Is Live. The legend was among ten of "the world's most enduring conspiracy theories" according to Time in 2009. Beginnings Although rumours that Paul McCartney's health was deteriorating had existed since early 1966, reports that McCartney had died only started circulating in September of that year. The Beatles' press officer, Tony Barrow, recounted this in his book, John, Paul, George, Ringo and Me. Fleet Street reporters started phoning Barrow early in that month, to confirm rumours regarding the Beatle's health and even a possible death, to which he replied that he had recently spoken with McCartney. For the rest of 1966, the rumour was eclipsed by similar reports that Paul McCartney was working on a solo project and that the Beatles were splitting up, which were backed by their disappearance from the public eye and the postponement of their scheduled tours in late 1966. In early 1967, the rumour resurfaced in London, this time claiming that Paul McCartney had been killed in a traffic accident while driving along the M1 motorway on 7 January. The rumour was acknowledged and rebutted in the February issue of The Beatles Book. McCartney then alluded to the rumour during a press conference held about the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in May.[better source needed] The Beatles' producer George Martin once claimed that, during the Beatles' visit to Denver, Colorado, "a number of people pretending to be Beatles" were employed by the promoters of the band's concerts in order to distract the crowds of fans from the real Beatles, while they were exiting a hotel. According to journalist Maureen O'Grady, who wrote about it in the May 1966 issue of RAVE Magazine, such a tactic was used when the Beatles first played in Baltimore, in 1964. As a result, stories began to circulate that the Beatles had sent four lookalikes to perform on stage on one of their American tours. Both Paul McCartney and George Harrison later refuted these claims. Despite the Beatles dismissing such accusations, they soon began accompanying the notion that McCartney had died. By late 1967, it was further stated that the Beatles had covered up his death by employing a Paul McCartney impersonator to stand in for him. For example, journalist Jay Marks was attending McCartney's engagement party in 1967 when a friend of the band told him that McCartney had been replaced. By the mid-1960s, the Beatles were known for sometimes including backmasking in their music. Analysing their lyrics for hidden meaning had also become a popular trend in the US. In November 1968, their self-titled double LP (also known as the "White Album") was released containing the track "Glass Onion". John Lennon wrote the song in response to "gobbledygook" said about Sgt. Pepper. In a later interview, he said that he was purposely confusing listeners with lines such as "the Walrus was Paul" – a reference to his song "I Am the Walrus" from the 1967 EP and album Magical Mystery Tour. On 17 September 1969, Tim Harper, an editor of the Drake Times-Delphic, the student newspaper of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, published an article titled "Is Beatle Paul McCartney Dead?" The article addressed a rumour being circulated on campus that cited clues from recent Beatles albums, including a message interpreted as "Turn me on, dead man", heard when the White Album track "Revolution 9" is played backwards. Also referenced was the back cover of Sgt. Pepper, where every Beatle except McCartney is photographed facing the viewer. He is wearing a black badge which appears to read "OPD" (Officially Pronounced Dead). In reality, this badge read "OPP" (Ontario Provincial Police). On the front cover, Starr in a suit looks at the flowered grave, mourning, and McCartney (in a suit) puts his hand on his shoulder. Starr looks sadly down at a tomb shaped like a P, with 4 strings looking like a bass. The front cover of Magical Mystery Tour depicts one unidentified band member in a differently coloured suit from the other three. According to music journalist Merrell Noden, Harper's Drake Times-Delphic was the first to publish an article on the "Paul is dead" theory.[nb 1] Harper later said that it had become the subject of discussion among students at the start of the new academic year, and he added: "A lot of us, because of Vietnam and the so-called Establishment, were ready, willing and able to believe just about any sort of conspiracy." In late September 1969, the Beatles released the album Abbey Road while they were in the process of disbanding. On 10 October, the Beatles' press officer, Derek Taylor, responded to the rumour stating: Recently we've been getting a flood of inquiries asking about reports that Paul is dead. We've been getting questions like that for years, of course, but in the past few weeks we've been getting them at the office and home night and day. I'm even getting telephone calls from disc jockeys and others in the United States. Throughout this period, McCartney felt isolated from his bandmates in his opposition to their choice of business manager, Allen Klein, and distraught at Lennon's private announcement that he was leaving the group. With the birth of his daughter Mary in late August, McCartney had withdrawn to focus on his family life. On 22 October, the day that the "Paul is dead" rumour became an international news story, McCartney, his wife Linda and their two daughters travelled to Scotland to spend time at his farm near Campbeltown. Growth On 12 October 1969, a caller to Detroit radio station WKNR-FM told disc jockey Russ Gibb about the rumour and its clues. Gibb and other callers then discussed the rumour on air for the next hour, during which Gibb offered further potential clues. Two days later, The Michigan Daily published a satirical review of Abbey Road by University of Michigan student Fred LaBour, who had listened to the exchange on Gibb's show, under the headline "McCartney Dead; New Evidence Brought to Light". It identified various clues to McCartney's alleged death on Beatles album covers, particularly on the Abbey Road sleeve. LaBour later said he had invented many of the clues and was astonished when the story was picked up by newspapers across the United States. Noden writes that "Very soon, every college campus, every radio station, had a resident expert." WKNR fuelled the rumour further with its two-hour programme The Beatle Plot, which first aired on 19 October. The show – which has been called "infamous", a "fraud" and a "mockumentary" – brought enormous worldwide publicity to Gibb and WKNR. The story was soon taken up by more mainstream radio stations in the New York area, WMCA and WABC. In the early hours of 21 October, WABC disc jockey Roby Yonge discussed the rumour on-air for over an hour before being pulled off the air for breaking format. At that time of night, WABC's signal covered a wide listening area and could be heard in 38 US states and, at times, in other countries. Although the Beatles' press office denied the rumour, McCartney's atypical withdrawal from public life contributed to its escalation. Vin Scelsa, a student broadcaster in 1969, later said that the escalation was indicative of the countercultural influence of Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, since: "Every song from them – starting about late 1966 – became a personal message, worthy of endless scrutiny ... they were guidelines on how to live your life." WMCA dispatched Alex Bennett to the Beatles' Apple Corps headquarters in London on 23 October, to further his extended coverage of the "Paul is dead" theory. There, Ringo Starr told Bennett: "If people are gonna believe it, they're gonna believe it. I can only say it's not true." In a radio interview with John Small of WKNR, Lennon said that the rumour was "insane" but good publicity for Abbey Road.[nb 2] On Halloween night 1969, WKBW in Buffalo, New York, broadcast a programme titled Paul McCartney Is Alive and Well – Maybe, which analysed Beatles lyrics and other clues. The WKBW DJs concluded that the "Paul is dead" hoax was fabricated by Lennon. Before the end of October 1969, several record releases had exploited the phenomenon of McCartney's alleged demise. These included "The Ballad of Paul" by the Mystery Tour; "Brother Paul" by Billy Shears and the All Americans; "So Long Paul" by Werbley Finster, a pseudonym for José Feliciano; and Zacharias and His Tree People's "We're All Paul Bearers (Parts One and Two)". Another song was Terry Knight's "Saint Paul", which had been a minor hit in June that year and was subsequently adopted by radio stations as a tribute to "the late Paul McCartney".[nb 3] A cover version of "Saint Paul" by New Zealand singer Shane reached the top of that nation's singles charts. According to a report in Billboard magazine in early November, Shelby Singleton Productions planned to issue a documentary LP of radio segments discussing the phenomenon. In Canada, Polydor Records exploited the rumour in their artwork for Very Together, a repackaging of the Beatles' pre-fame recordings with Tony Sheridan, using a cover that showed four candles, one of which had just been snuffed out. Premise Many versions of this theory have arisen since its initial exposure to the public, but most proponents of the theory maintain that, on 9 November 1966 (or 11 September), McCartney had an argument with his bandmates during a recording session and drove away in anger. While distracted by a meter maid ("Lovely Rita"), he failed to notice the change in traffic lights ("A Day In The Life"), crashed, and was decapitated ("Don't Pass Me By"). A funeral service for McCartney was held, featuring eulogies from Harrison ("Blue Jay Way") and Starr ("Don't Pass Me By"), followed by a procession (the front cover of Abbey Road), with Lennon as the priest officiating his funeral and burying him (the alleged "I buried Paul" statement in "Strawberry Fields Forever"). To spare the public from grief, the surviving Beatles replaced McCartney with the winner of a McCartney look-alike contest. This scenario was facilitated by the Beatles' recent retirement from live performance and by their choosing to present themselves with a new image for their next album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which they began recording later that month. In LaBour's telling, the stand-in was an "orphan from Edinburgh named William Campbell" whom the Beatles then trained to impersonate McCartney. Others contended that the man's name was Bill Shepherd, later altered to Billy Shears, and the replacement was instigated by Britain's MI5 out of concern for the severe distress McCartney's death would cause the Beatles' audience. In this latter telling, the surviving Beatles were said to be wracked with guilt over their actions, and therefore left messages in their music and album artwork to communicate the truth to their fans. A DJ put all those signs together: Paul with no shoes [on the cover of Abbey Road] ... and the Volkswagen Beetle. Then there was Magical Mystery Tour, where we three had red roses and he had a black one. It was just madness ... There was no way we could prove he was alive. Dozens of supposed clues to McCartney's death have been identified by fans and followers of the legend. These include messages perceived when listening to songs being played backwards and symbolic interpretations of both lyrics and album cover imagery. Two frequently cited examples are the suggestions that the words "I buried Paul" are spoken by Lennon in the final section of the song "Strawberry Fields Forever", which the Beatles recorded in November and December 1966 (Lennon later said that the words were actually "Cranberry sauce"), and that the words "number nine, number nine" in "Revolution 9" (from the "White Album") became "turn me on, dead man, turn me on, dead man" when played backwards. A similar reversal at the end of "I'm So Tired" (another "White Album" track) yielded "Paul is dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him...". Another example is the interpretation of the Abbey Road album cover as depicting a funeral procession: Lennon, dressed in white, is said to symbolise the heavenly figure; Starr, dressed in black, symbolises the undertaker; George Harrison, in denim, represents the gravedigger; and McCartney, barefoot and out of step with the others, symbolises the corpse. The number plate of the white Volkswagen Beetle in the photo – containing the characters LMW 281F (mistakenly read as "28IF") – was identified as further "evidence". "28IF" represented McCartney's age "if" he had still been alive (although McCartney was 27 when the album was recorded and released), while "LMW" stood for "Linda McCartney weeps" or "Linda McCartney, widow" (although McCartney and the then-Linda Eastman had not yet met in 1966, the year of his alleged death).[nb 4] That the left-handed McCartney held a cigarette in his right hand was also said to support the idea that he was an impostor. Rebuttal On 21 October 1969, the Beatles' press office again issued statements denying the rumour, deeming it "a load of old rubbish" and saying that "the story has been circulating for about two years – we get letters from all sorts of nuts but Paul is still very much with us". On 24 October, BBC Radio reporter Chris Drake was granted an interview with McCartney at his farm. McCartney said that the speculation was understandable, given that he normally did "an interview a week" to ensure he remained in the news. Part of the interview was first broadcast on Radio 4, on 26 October, and subsequently on WMCA in the US. According to author John Winn, McCartney had agreed to the interview "in hopes that people hearing his voice would see the light", but the ploy failed.[nb 5] McCartney was secretly filmed by a CBS News crew as he worked on his farm. As in his and Linda's segment in the Beatles' promotional clip for "Something", which the couple filmed privately around this time, McCartney was unshaven and unusually scruffy-looking in his appearance. His next visitors were a reporter and photographer from Life magazine. Irate at the intrusion, he swore at the pair, threw a bucket of water over them and was captured on film attempting to hit the photographer. Fearing that the photos would damage his image, McCartney then approached the pair and agreed to pose for a photo with his family and answer the reporter's questions, in exchange for the roll of film containing the offending pictures. In Winn's description, the family portrait used for Life's cover shows McCartney no longer "shabbily attired", but "clean-shaven and casually but smartly dressed". Following the publication of the article and the photo, in the issue dated 7 November, the rumour started to decline. In the interview, McCartney said the rumour was "bloody stupid" and went on to say: Perhaps the rumour started because I haven't been much in the press lately. I have done enough press for a lifetime, and I don't have anything to say these days. I am happy to be with my family and I will work when I work. I was switched on for ten years and I never switched off. Now I am switching off whenever I can. I would rather be a little less famous these days. Aftermath In November 1969, Capitol Records sales managers reported a significant increase in sales of Beatles catalogue albums, attributed to the rumour. Rocco Catena, Capitol's vice-president of national merchandising, estimated that "this is going to be the biggest month in history in terms of Beatles sales". The rumour benefited the commercial performance of Abbey Road in the US, where it comfortably outsold all of the band's previous albums. Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour, both of which had been off the charts since February, re-entered the Billboard Top LPs chart, peaking at number 101 and number 109, respectively. A television special dedicated to "Paul is dead" was broadcast on WOR in New York on 30 November. Titled Paul McCartney: The Complete Story, Told for the First and Last Time, it was set in a courtroom and hosted by celebrity lawyer F. Lee Bailey, who cross-examined LaBour, Gibb and other proponents of the theory, and heard opposing views from "witnesses" such as McCartney's friend Peter Asher, brother Mike McCartney and Allen Klein. Bailey left it to the viewer to determine a conclusion. Before the recording, LaBour told Bailey that his article had been intended as a joke, to which Bailey sighed and replied, "Well, we have an hour of television to do; you're going to have to go along with this." It was a bit weird meeting people shortly after that, because they'd be looking at the back of my ears, looking a bit through me. And it was weird doing the "I really am him" stuff. McCartney returned to London in December. Bolstered by Linda's support, he began recording his debut solo album at his home in St John's Wood. Titled McCartney, and recorded without his bandmates' knowledge, it was "one of the best-kept secrets in rock history" until shortly before its release in April 1970, according to author Nicholas Schaffner, and led to the announcement of the Beatles' break-up. In his 1971 song "How Do You Sleep?", in which he attacked McCartney's character, Lennon described the theorists as "freaks" who "was right when they said you was dead". The rumour was also cited in the hoax surrounding the Canadian band Klaatu, after a January 1977 review of their debut album, 3:47 EST, sparked rumours that the group were in fact the Beatles. In one telling, this theory contended that the album had been recorded in late 1966 but then mislaid until 1975, at which point Lennon, Harrison and Starr elected to issue it in McCartney's memory. LaBour later became notable as the bassist for the western swing group Riders in the Sky, which he co-founded in 1977. In 2008, he joked that his success as a musician had extended his fifteen minutes of fame for his part in the rumour to "seventeen minutes". In 2015, he told The Detroit News that he is still periodically contacted by conspiracy theorists who have attempted to present him with supposed new developments on the McCartney rumours. Analysis and legacy Author Peter Doggett writes that, while he thinks the theory behind "Paul is dead" defied logic, its popularity was understandable in a climate where citizens were faced with conspiracy theories insisting that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 was in fact a coup d'état. Schaffner said that, given its origins as an item of gossip and intrigue generated by a select group in the "Beatles cult", "Paul is dead" serves as "a genuine folk tale of the mass communications era". He also described it as "the most monumental hoax since Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast persuaded thousands of panicky New Jerseyites that Martian invaders were in the vicinity". In his book Revolution in the Head, Ian MacDonald says that the Beatles were partly responsible for the phenomenon due to their incorporation of "random lyrics and effects", particularly in the White Album track "Glass Onion" in which Lennon invited clue-hunting by including references to other Beatles songs. MacDonald groups it with the "psychic epidemics" that were encouraged by the rock audience's use of hallucinogenic drugs and which escalated with Charles Manson's homicidal interpretation of the White Album and Mark David Chapman's murder of Lennon in 1980. During the 1970s, the phenomenon became a subject of academic study in America in the fields of sociology, psychology and communications. Among sociological studies, Barbara Suczek recognised it as, in Schaffner's description, a contemporary reading of the "archetypal myth wherein the beautiful youth dies and is resurrected as a god". Psychologists Ralph Rosnow and Gary Fine attributed its popularity partly to the shared, vicarious experience of searching for clues without consequence for the participants. They also said that for a generation distrustful of the media following the Warren Commission's report, it was able to thrive amid a climate informed by "The credibility gap of Lyndon Johnson's presidency, the widely circulated rumors after the Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations, as well as attacks on the leading media sources by the yippies and Spiro Agnew". American social critic Camille Paglia locates the "Paul is dead" phenomenon to the Ancient Greek tradition symbolised by Adonis and Antinous, as represented in the cult of rock music's "pretty, long-haired boys who mesmerize both sexes", and she adds: "It's no coincidence that it was Paul McCartney, the 'cutest' and most girlish of the Beatles, who inspired a false rumor that swept the world in 1969 that he was dead." "Paul is dead" has continued to inspire analysis into the 21st century, with published studies by Andru J. Reeve, Nick Kollerstrom and Brian Moriarty, among others, and exploitative works in the mediums of mockumentary and documentary film. Writing in 2016, Beatles biographer Steve Turner said, "the theory still has the power to flare back into life." He cited a 2009 Wired Italia magazine article that featured an analysis by two forensic research consultants who compared selected photographs of McCartney taken before and after his alleged death by measuring features of the skull. According to the scientists' findings, the man shown in the post-November 1966 images was not the same.[nb 6] Similar rumours concerning other celebrities have been circulated, including the unsubstantiated allegation that Canadian singer Avril Lavigne died in 2003 and was replaced by a person named Melissa Vandella. In an article on the latter phenomenon, The Guardian described the 1969 McCartney hoax as "Possibly the best known example" of a celebrity being the focus of "a (completely unverified) cloning conspiracy theory". In 2009, Time magazine included "Paul is dead" in its feature on ten of "the world's most enduring conspiracy theories". In popular culture There have been many references to the legend in popular culture, including the following examples. See also Notes References Bibliography External links California drought manipulation |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Belief:_Fact_or_Fiction] | [TOKENS: 1354] |
Contents Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction is an American television anthology series created by Lynn Lehmann, presented by Dick Clark Productions, and produced and aired by the Fox network from 1997 to 2002. Each episode features stories, all of which appear to defy logic, and some of which are allegedly based on actual events. The viewer is offered the challenge of determining which are true and which are false. At the end of the show, it is revealed to the viewer whether the tales were true or works of fiction. The series was hosted by James Brolin in season one and by Jonathan Frakes from season two onwards. The show was narrated by Don LaFontaine for the first three seasons and by Campbell Lane for the fourth season. The Germany-exclusive fifth season is narrated by Eberhard Prüfer. Beginning in 2021, new episodes began to be produced for German channel RTL II, hosted by Frakes. Format The stories told in the program all have some connection with the supernatural, ghosts, psychic phenomena, coincidences, destiny, or other such unusual occurrences. Each episode of the show, as well as all stories within, are introduced with a pun or some other form of witticism pertaining to the particular story and episode, and they all include the underlying moral that not everything we perceive as truth and falsehood is as such, and that it can often be difficult to truly separate fact from fiction, hence the show's title. Since the Frakes era, the intros are filmed on a set resembling the interior of a Victorian mansion. Each episode typically features five stories, at least one of which is supposedly true and at least one of which is a complete fabrication. The majority of true stories on the show are based on first-hand research conducted by author Robert Tralins yet mostly perpetuate hearsay or urban legends as facts, while many of the ones that turned out to be false are either completely fictional or modern-dressed re-tellings of untrue urban legends.[citation needed] From season two onwards Jonathan Frakes would end each story with a pun related to the story, while James Brolin always retold a story instead of showing a clip. Popularity, cancellation and revivals Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction had a sporadic airing schedule on its original networks, sometimes going for weeks or even months between airings. There is a two-year lag between Don LaFontaine and Campbell Lane's stints as narrator for the show, during which time it was believed that it had been cancelled, only for it to be brought back for another season in the summer of 2002. It was cancelled after its 2002 season. During his stint as narrator, Lane played the character John August in the Season 4 segment 'The Cigar Box'. In Germany, where Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction is known as X-Factor: Das Unfassbare (The Unfathomable), the show was especially successful and still has a cult following. This led to the X-Factor brand being extended to other shows: The Paranormal Borderline became X-Factor: Die fünfte Dimension (The Fifth Dimension), X-Factor: Wahre Lügen (True Lies) is a German series, and Scariest Places on Earth became X-Factor: Die wahre Dimension der Angst (The Real Dimension of Fear). Starting on 4 November 2018, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the series' premiere in Germany, RTL II produced two special episodes under the name X-Factor: Das Unfassbare kehrt zurück (The Unfathomable Returns), hosted by Detlef Bothe. While directly copying much of the original's style and studio setup, this revival was heavily panned by audiences due to the poorer production quality in comparison to the original. The show was continued in 2019 and 2020 on RTL II and now has a total of six episodes, with the latest episodes receiving slightly more favorable reviews. In 2019, Frakes reprised his role for a sketch on the Fox NFL pregame show. In October 2021, German private channel RTL II began broadcasting a revival of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, with Jonathan Frakes reprising his role as the host. The first new episode was broadcast in German-speaking countries on October 31, 2021. Unlike previous seasons, the segments were produced and set in Germany, while the introductions by Jonathan Frakes were recorded in Los Angeles. Another set of two episodes aired in Germany on October 30, 2022. The new episodes were filmed in and around Los Angeles and are dubbed for German television. The production was executed by German studios Superama Film and Wiedemann & Berg Television and will feature 10 new stories. Episodes Of the 239 stories told over the course of the 48 episodes, 139 were declared to be "fact." Each episode of the series' run had at least one "fiction" story and at least two "fact" stories. This season premiered in Germany nearly a year before it aired on FOX; albeit, out of order. This season premiered in Germany over two months before it aired on FOX. The episodes were filmed in and around Vancouver, British Columbia, unlike with previous seasons, which were filmed in California. This season was produced exclusively for the German television market by German channel RTL II. The first episode premiered in Germany on Halloween 2021, with further episodes being released each following Halloween. Unlike previous seasons, the segments of the first episode were produced and set in Germany, while the introductions by Jonathan Frakes were recorded in Los Angeles. Multiple German media personalities such as Gronkh made guest appearances. Eight more episodes of season 5 were filmed in and around Los Angeles in 2022, with the first two episodes airing on October 30, 2022, in Germany. As of 2022, the English versions of these episodes have not been released in any market. Syndication/Home media During its final run of Fox, the series was picked up for reruns by the Sci-fi Channel, which ran from July 8, 2002 to September 6, 2005. It would later air on the now defunct Chiller channel from 2009 to 2016. Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction Season One was released on DVD in Region 1 on August 28, 2007. In 2018, FilmRise obtained the rights to the series, and made it available for video streaming via Amazon Prime and other services, including their YouTube channel. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Mistletoe_Bough] | [TOKENS: 794] |
Contents Legend of the Mistletoe Bough The Legend of the Mistletoe Bough is a horror story which has been associated with many mansions and stately homes in England. A new bride, playing a game of hide-and-seek or trying to get away from the crowd during her wedding breakfast, hides in a chest in an attic and is unable to escape. She is not discovered by her family and friends, and suffocates or dies of thirst. The body is found many years later in the locked chest as a skeleton in a wedding dress. Notable claimants for the story's location, some still displaying the chest, include Bramshill House and Marwell Hall in Hampshire, Castle Horneck in Cornwall, Basildon Park Grotto in Berkshire, Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire, Exton Hall in Rutland, Brockdish Hall in Norfolk and Bawdrip Rectory in Somerset.[citation needed] History The tale first appeared in print in the form of a poem by Samuel Rogers entitled "Ginevra", in his book Italy published in 1822. In notes on this work, Rogers states 'The story is, I believe, founded on fact; though the time and the place are uncertain. Many old houses lay claim to it.' The popularity of the tale was greatly increased when it appeared as a song in the 1830s entitled 'The Mistletoe Bough' written by T. H. Bayly and Sir Henry Bishop. The song proved very popular. In 1859, its 'solemn chanting' was referred to as a 'national occurrence at Christmas' in English households, and by 1862 the song was referred to as 'one of the most popular songs ever written', 'which must be known by heart by many readers'. Further works inspired by the song include a play of the same name by Charles A. Somerset, first produced in 1835, and two short stories: Henry James's "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" (published 1868) and Susan Wallace's "Ginevra or The Old Oak Chest: A Christmas Story" (published 1887). The song is also played in Thomas Hardy's A Laodicean, after the scene involving the capture of George Somerset's handkerchief from the tower. Kate Mosse reinterpreted the story in her 2013 short-story collection The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales. Film versions of the story include a 1904 production by the Clarendon Film Company, directed by Percy Stow; a 1923 version made by the British and Colonial Kinematograph Company; and a 1926 production by Cosmopolitan Films, directed by C.C. Calvert. The Percy Stow film version of the story can be seen on the BFI player with a new specially commissioned score by Pete Wiggs from the band Saint Etienne. The story of the Mistletoe Bough is recounted in the 1948 Alfred Hitchcock film Rope, where it is said to be the favourite tale of the main character, Brandon Shaw. Unbeknownst to the story teller, Shaw has previously murdered his friend, former classmate David Kentley, and hidden the body in the chest in front of which they are standing. The story is also recounted in The Hand in the Trap, a 1961 Argentine film directed by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson. In a conversation between the characters Laura Lavigne (Elsa Daniel) and Cristóbal Achával (Francisco Rabal), Cristóbal refers to the story as Modena's Bride. He tells the tale of a woman who, on her wedding night, played hide and seek with her husband and hid inside a chest. No-one could find her. Twenty years later, her skeleton was found wrapped in tulle. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_Panther] | [TOKENS: 553] |
Contents Canterbury Panther The Canterbury Panther or Canterbury Cat is a New Zealand urban legend about a black panther which is said to live in the Canterbury Region. Sightings of the animal go back to before the 1970s. History The Canterbury Panther first made headlines in July 1977, when Kaiapoi resident Frances Clark alleged that she had seen a tiger outside her home. She did not originally plan to report the incident, as she was in disbelief of the event, but became increasingly worried about the possibility of the cat attacking school children later in the morning. After the local police were informed, they amassed a search party with assistance from the Orana Wildlife Park, as it was believed the animal could have escaped from their zoo, though all their big cats were later accounted for. As the search failed to produce any evidence of a tiger in the area, Clark was promptly ridiculed by the public for presumably lying to police, until paw prints and animal droppings were discovered in Pines Beach, close to Clark's home. This led local authorities to start a second search for the animal, as they now genuinely believed there was a tiger on the loose. After the second search, sightings of the Canterbury Panther would die down until the 1990s, when two separate sightings were reported in 1996 and 1999. Further searches were conducted by local authorities in 2001, 2003, and 2006. Proposed explanations The most common explanation for sightings of the Canterbury Panther are attributed to the mistaken identity of unusually large, feral cats with black fur. After hunter Jesse Feary shot and killed what he believed was a specimen of the panther in September 2020, Dr Shaun Wilkinson of Wilderlab offered test the animal's DNA for free. After his company had tested it, Wilkinson came to the conclusion that it was not a panther or any other big cat, emailing Feary in late 2020 to state that it was "[j]ust a standard cat by the looks of the DNA." Similarly, it has been proposed that descriptions of the creature's size are a result of gigantism. In popular culture The search for the Canterbury Panther served as a thematic framing device for the second season of the New Zealand comedy/conspiracy theory podcast Did Titanic Sink?, hosted by Tim Batt and Carlo Richie in July and August 2024. It features prominently in the 2024 film Bookworm. The film's writer and director, Ant Timpson, is a self-described fan of the myth and similar urban legends, describing them as "profoundly nostalgic, in a way. They give us this sense that the world is this great, beautiful, wondrous place where anything could happen." See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bartley] | [TOKENS: 937] |
Contents James Bartley James Bartley (1870–1909) is the central figure in a late nineteenth-century story according to which he was swallowed whole by a sperm whale. He was found still living days later in the stomach of the whale, which was dead from harpooning. The story first appeared in anonymous form in American newspapers. The anonymous article appeared in the St. Louis Globe Democrat of Saint Louis, Missouri, then the note appeared in other newspapers with the title "A Modern Jonah" or something similar in multiple newspapers. The story was later reprinted in international newspapers, such as the Yarmouth Mercury in England, Great Yarmouth, on August 22, 1891, under headlines like ‘Man in a Whale’s Stomach’ and ‘Rescue of a Modern Jonah’. Story The story, as reported, is that during a whaling expedition off the Falkland Islands, Bartley’s boat was attacked by a whale, and he was said to have ended up in the whale’s mouth. The story claimed that he survived and was discovered in the whale’s stomach by his crewmates when they, not knowing he was inside, caught and began skinning the whale, because the hot weather otherwise would have rotted the whale meat. It was said that Bartley was inside the whale for 36 hours, that his skin had been bleached by the gastric juices, and that he was blind the rest of his life. In some accounts, however, he was supposed to have returned to work within three weeks. He died 18 years later and his tombstone in Gloucester says "James Bartley – a modern day Jonah." In 1896, an article titled "A Modern Jonah Proves his Story" was published in the New York World; it quoted a brief portion of this story, as told by Rev. William Justin Harsha, along with some initial observations. This was followed about a week later by another article that briefly summarised some responses from readers, followed by a third article by William L. Stone, who related a similar story involving a massive "man-eating shark". The French scientist De Parville published a report of the alleged incident in the Paris Journal des Débats in 1914. Investigations More recently, the facts were carefully investigated by historian Edward B. Davis, who pointed out many inconsistencies. The ship in the story is The Star of the East. While a British ship by the same name existed and sailed during the time in which the incident allegedly occurred and could have been near the Falklands at the right time, the relevant Star of the East was not a whaling vessel and its crew list did not include a James Bartley. Moreover, Mrs. John Killam, the wife of the Captain, wrote a letter stating that "there is not one word of truth in the whale story. I was with my husband all the years he was in the Star of the East. There was never a man lost overboard while my husband was in her. The sailor has told a great sea yarn." Davis suggested that the story may have been inspired by the "Gorleston whale", a 30-foot (9.1 m) rorqual killed near Great Yarmouth shortly before in June 1891 that generated a lot of publicity. While the veracity of the story is in question, it is physically possible for a sperm whale to swallow a human whole, as they are known to swallow giant squid whole. However, the person would likely not survive due to conditions within the stomach.[citation needed] Like ruminants, the sperm whale has a four-chambered stomach. The first secretes no gastric juices and has very thick muscular walls to crush the food (since whales cannot chew) and resist the claw and sucker attacks of swallowed squid. The second chamber is larger and is where digestion takes place. Cultural references George Orwell refers to this incident (twice) in his 1939 novel Coming Up for Air (though not in his 1940 essay "Inside the Whale"). Julian Barnes references the event in his novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, as did Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End and J. M. Ledgard in his novel Submergence, the latter albeit using a different name, John More, for the swallowed victim. Clive Cussler also refers to the James Bartley story in his novel Medusa. James Bartley was also mentioned in the 1965 "Jonah and the Whale" episode of the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea television series. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_of_Lima] | [TOKENS: 678] |
Contents Treasure of Lima The Treasure of Lima is a legendary buried treasure reputedly removed from Lima, Peru, in 1820 and never recovered. It is estimated to be worth up to £160 million or $208 million in today's money. History Spain had controlled Lima since the 16th century, when it defeated the Incas. In the centuries that followed, the Roman Catholic Church gathered a huge treasure in Lima. In the early 19th century, Spain began to have difficulties with its colonies due to wars of independence in South America. Lima was no exception, and in 1820 the city came under heavy pressure and finally had to be evacuated. (See also Peruvian War of Independence.) In 1820, Lima was on the edge of revolt. As a preventative measure, the Viceroy of Lima decided to transport the city's fabulous wealth to Mexico for safekeeping. The treasures included jeweled stones, candlesticks, and two life-size solid gold statues of Mary holding the baby Jesus. In all, the treasure was valued at between $12 million and $60 million. Captain William Thompson, commander of the Mary Dear, was put in charge of transporting the riches to Mexico. Thompson and his crew proved to be unable to resist the temptation; they turned pirate, cut the throats of the guards and accompanying priests, and threw their bodies overboard. Thompson headed for Cocos Island, off the coast of present-day Costa Rica, where he and his men allegedly buried the treasure. They then decided to split up and lie low until the situation had calmed down, at which time they would reconvene to divvy up the spoils. However, the Mary Dear was captured, and the crew went on trial for piracy. All but Thompson and his first mate James Alexander Forbes were hanged. To save their lives, the two agreed to lead the Spanish to the stolen treasure. They took them as far as the Cocos Islands and then managed to escape into the jungle. Thompson, the first mate, and the treasure were never seen again, though it is believed that Thompson returned to Newfoundland with the aid of a whaling ship. Forbes settled in California and became a successful businessman, but never returned to the island. Treasure hunting Since that time, hundreds of treasure hunters have travelled to Cocos Island and tried to find the Treasure of Lima, sometimes also referred to as the Loot of Lima, or the Cocos Island Treasure. One of the most notable was the German August Gissler, who lived on the island from 1889 to 1908. Another was the American gangster Bugsy Siegel and yet another was New Zealand explorer Frank Worsley. None succeeded in finding the treasure. One theory is that the treasure was not buried on the Cocos Islands at all, but on an unknown island off the coast of Central America. The Costa Rican government does not allow treasure hunting any longer and believes no treasure exists on this island. Underscoring this legend are several facts: Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition An art project called Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition took place on Cocos Island in May 2014. A container with artwork by 40 different artists was buried in a secret location, with the coordinates auctioned off. See also References External links Royal Geographical Society of South Australia historical blog |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Legends_(TV_series)] | [TOKENS: 344] |
Contents Urban Legends (TV series) Urban Legends is a Canadian documentary-style television series hosted by Michael Allcock until David Hewlett became the new host in 2011. In each episode, three urban legends are dramatized and presented to the television audience; the audience is then asked to speculate which one or two of the three is true. Each legend has witnesses to tell the story. For the one or two fake legends, the witnesses are actors, while the true legend(s) uses real people affected by the story. Included in each episode are two quick quiz-like stories, called mini-myths, which air before the commercial breaks. Each begins with the number of the mini myth and its name, followed by the story. After the commercial, the answer to the mini-myth is announced and the rest of the programming continues as it previously had. The show originally aired on the Biography Channel in the US, History Television and Global in Canada and FX in the United Kingdom where it was hosted by Mark Dolan. It has also aired in Argentina, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Australia, Finland, Estonia, The Netherlands, Russia, Hungary and Denmark. The series briefly returned to the Syfy network as an "Original Series" with new episodes starting on Monday April 18, 2011, then moved to the regular time, Fridays at 10. The new episodes followed exactly the same format as the original but were narrated by Stargate's David Hewlett. The show aired occasionally as reruns and mini-marathons on both SyFy and Chiller. External links This article about a documentary television show originating in Canada is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petscop] | [TOKENS: 1152] |
Contents Petscop Petscop is a YouTube horror web series by Tony Domenico, made to resemble a YouTube Let's Play series. The videos follow "Paul", the protagonist, exploring and documenting a supposedly "long-lost PlayStation video game" titled Petscop. The 24-episode series ran from March 12, 2017, to September 2, 2019. The series received widespread coverage for its storytelling, authenticity, surrealism, and its active community of viewers. Plot summary The main character, Paul, has found or received a copy of the titular unreleased game Petscop, supposedly developed by the fictional company Garalina, uploading recordings of its early levels. Initially, the game seems like a standard PlayStation puzzle game, centering around the player character—named "Guardian"—capturing strange creatures known as "pets" by solving puzzles. Paul notes that the game is unfinished and lacks playable content. The first four episodes are recorded by Paul for a specific, unnamed, person. Later, Paul acknowledges that his recordings have found an audience on YouTube, though he still narrates directly to the unseen character, and occasionally speaks to them with their responses being silent to the viewer, presumably using a phone. The game box, however, came attached with a note containing a code and instructions. By following these, Paul is able to access a dark, hidden section of the game. The new area, known as the "Newmaker Plane", is a vast grassy field, pitch dark except for a spotlight following the Guardian. The field has few landmarks, and a large network of underground tunnels. The area still loosely follows conventions of puzzle games, and Paul attempts to reverse engineer the puzzles (and the internal logic of the game) to continue progressing. As Paul finds more content, it is slowly revealed—through references to 'real-world' events and characters—that Petscop was designed for a specific person who did something horrible. The series' overarching plot involves a man named Marvin, the disappearance of his childhood friend Lina, and an incident in which Marvin kidnaps his own daughter, Care, who he believes to be Lina reborn. There is a recurring focus on "rebirthing", a failed attempt to rebirth a girl named Belle into a girl named Tiara, and a growing connection between Paul, his family's past, and the game. It is later implied that some footage is not from Paul's perspective, introducing new viewpoints from Belle and Marvin, who are all playing Petscop simultaneously. Marvin solicits Paul's help to find landmarks on the Newmaker Plane, and re-enact the process of rebirthing his daughter, Care. Later, Paul realizes that the landmarks on the Newmaker Plane may have significance to real-life locations; after presumably traveling to one of the real landmarks, Paul's voice is no longer present after this point, though his videos continue to be uploaded without narration. Characters Reception and legacy Petscop has received coverage from many news sources, such as The New Yorker and Kotaku: Kotaku's Patricia Hernandez wrote "if this is an internet story / game, then I am in awe of how elaborate it is", and for The New Yorker's Alex Barron, it is "the king of creepypasta". The Petscop YouTube channel, as of July 2023, has over 396,000 subscribers. Brooklyn's Spectacle Theater presented the first ever public screening of the series in its entirety on October 12, 2024. Petscop, as a video game, is fictional, although this was obscured for the entire run of the series. Some viewers were initially unsure as to whether "Paul" and Petscop were real, until further into the series when it became more surrealistic. Petscop was not officially identified as fiction until after the finale, when creator Tony Domenico—who had remained anonymous for the series' 30-month run—revealed himself on Twitter. In an interview, Domenico admitted that, while the story had a concrete plot, he chose to omit most of it, sometimes scrapping footage that was already done. "I hoped to get across a feeling like there's... something strange and complex happening in the background, and you just aren't getting a full view of it." In the darker sections of the game, there are many references to child abuse, childhood trauma, and irreparable corruption, making those recurring motifs throughout the series. In addition to these themes, Domenico has cited the Marble Hornets and Ben Drowned web series as influences, involving the audience by hiding things in each video. He also named the 2006 David Lynch experimental film Inland Empire as the strongest influence for the series and noted that "too much is lost in that translation into words". He also cited the musical subgenre Vaporwave as an inspiration in an interview with Bandcamp. The series' initial episodes also include allusions to Candace Newmaker and her death in rebirthing therapy. Throughout the series, the word "Newmaker" appears several times; the name of the central location, and as a title given to Rainer, the Guardian character, and/or Paul himself. In addition, there is an area known as the "Quitter's Room", the repeated question "Do you remember being born?", and a character named Tiara. Domenico has stated that while the references were intentional, he later regretted them. Other references include a quote from the book Daisy-Head Mayzie by Dr. Seuss ("Good grief and alas"), and the imagery of the character Care crying underneath a large flower, which at first appears to be growing from her head. Notes See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_big_cats] | [TOKENS: 1587] |
Contents British big cats In British folklore and urban legend, British big cats refers to the subject of reported sightings of non-native, wild big cats in the United Kingdom. Many of these creatures have been described as "panthers", "pumas" or "black cats". There have been rare isolated incidents of recovered individual animals, often medium-sized species like the Eurasian lynx, though in one 1980 case, a puma was captured alive in Scotland. These are generally believed to have been escaped or released exotic pets that were held illegally, possibly released after the animals became too difficult to manage or after the introduction of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976. The existence of a population of "true big cats" in Britain, however, especially a breeding population, has been rejected by experts and the British government owing to a lack of convincing evidence for the presence of these animals. Supposed sightings made from a distance have been mostly written off as domestic cats close to the subject being misidentified as a larger animal sighted further away. One folklorist considered such sightings of creatures to be a "media artifact" driven by British journalistic practices in the 1970s and 1980s while another described it as the result of a situation where "media-generated interest encourages rumour, misinterpretation, and exaggeration". Reported sightings and attacks A medieval Welsh poem Pa Gwr in the Black Book of Carmarthen mentions a Cath Palug, meaning "Palug's cat" or "clawing cat", which roamed Anglesey until slain by Cei. In the Welsh Triads, it was the offspring of the monstrous sow Henwen. The New Forest folktale of the Stratford Lyon tells of how John de Stratford pulled a giant, red, antlered lion from the ground at South Baddesley in the New Forest in the year 1400. The story is first recorded in the marginalia of an 18th-century bible. In the late 20th century, sightings of the lion were recorded in the vicinity of the Red Lion Pub, Boldre.[page needed] William Cobbett recalled in his Rural Rides how, as a boy in the 1760s, he had seen a cat "as big as a middle-sized Spaniel dog" climb into a hollow elm tree in the grounds of the ruined Waverley Abbey near Farnham in Surrey. Later, in New Brunswick, he saw a "lucifee" (Canada lynx) " and it seemed to me to be just such a cat as I had seen at Waverley." Since the early 2000s, there have been several claims by individuals in different parts of the UK of having suffered attacks by supposed big cats, though to date there is no substantive evidence proving these were in fact attacks by a non-domestic species of cat. Such claims include that of an eleven-year-old boy in Monmouthshire, a man in southeast London, a 74-year-old woman in the Scottish Highlands, and a man in Cornwall. Phantom big cats have also formed the basis of several local urban legends within the United Kingdom where unexplained animal deaths, typically livestock, would be blamed on such imagined creatures, like the Beast of Bodmin Moor and the Cotswolds Big Cat. The search for physical "evidence" to support these claims has typically been found to have far more ordinary and less sensational origins. In the case of the Beast of Bodmin, when a skull found in the River Fowey was presented to the Natural History Museum as proof of its existence, it was found to have been cut from a leopard skin rug, while in the case of the Cotswolds Big Cat, the only predator DNA that was found was of foxes. One particular instance of note of this phenomenon is the "Beast of Exmoor" (sometimes referred to as the "Exmoor Beast"). While stories about the Beast of Exmoor originally surfaced in a similar fashion to other local "big cat stories", with sightings of the creature reported as early as 1970, the story came to national prominence in the United Kingdom in 1983 when a South Molton farmer named Eric Ley claimed to have lost over 100 sheep in the space of three months, all of them apparently killed by violent throat injuries. The claim that these livestock had been killed by a mysterious beast led to "nationwide interest", with the Daily Express offering a substantial financial reward for video footage of the creature, while the government took the unusual step of deploying a team of Royal Marine snipers to hunt down (and presumably kill) the creature. Despite extensive media coverage and both professional and amateur hunting for the creature, which in one unfortunate case saw a cryptozoologist having to be rescued after spending two nights stuck in his own trap, no large cat has ever been positively identified to explain such incidents as the 1983 livestock slayings, with them now being attributed to other causes like large dogs. Despite the lack of evidence, the Beast of Exmoor persists to some extent in the public imagination; alleged sightings continue to be reported occasionally around Exmoor long after an escaped exotic pet (such as a leopard or puma) would have died, while one national newspaper reported a found carcass alleged to be the Beast of Exmoor that was later identified as a dead seal. Beyond these rumours regarding the creature itself, it has been posited by one journalist that the lasting legacy of the urban legend may be as a mythological base that real-life wildlife stories such as the Emperor of Exmoor can reference. Proven captures and remains A Canadian lynx shot in Devon in 1903 is now in the collection of the Bristol Museum. Analysis of its teeth suggests that prior to its death, it had spent a significant amount of time in captivity. In 1980, a puma was captured in Inverness-shire, Scotland, and was subsequently put into the Highland Wildlife Park zoo, being given the name "Felicity". Zoo director Eddie Orbell concluded that the animal had been tamed and might not have been released for long, noting that it enjoyed being tickled. On two separate occasions, jungle cats have been found dead after being hit by a car, with the most accepted theory being that these are individuals escaped from private ownership. In 1996, police in Fintona, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, shot a cat. It was reportedly a caracal, a medium-sized wildcat species found in Africa and Asia, although a police report described it as a lynx. In a well-reported 2001 case ("the Beast of Barnet"), a young female Eurasian lynx was captured alive by police and vets in Cricklewood, North London, after a chase across school playing fields and into a block of flats. It was placed in London Zoo and given the name "Lara" before ultimately being transferred to a zoo in France to breed. The captured lynx was found to be only 18 months old, although considerably larger than an average domestic cat. In 2006, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published a list of predatory cats typically kept as exotic pets that they know to have escaped in the United Kingdom, although most of these have been recaptured. On 9 January 2025, two lynx were captured after being sighted in the Drumguish area near Kingussie, Scotland. They were put in quarantine at Highland Wildlife Park with plans to transfer them to Edinburgh Zoo. The lynx are believed to have been illegally released, given their tameness and bedding was found in a nearby layby. The following day, two more lynx were spotted in the same area and believed to be linked to the first two. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburban_Screams] | [TOKENS: 599] |
Contents Suburban Screams Suburban Screams (titled onscreen as John Carpenter's Suburban Screams) is an American documentary horror true crime anthology television series created by Jordan Roberts. The series is executive produced by Roberts, John Carpenter, Sandy King, Tony DiSanto, and Andy Portnoy. The series debuted on Peacock on October 13, 2023, with all six episodes released simultaneously. Cast Production In January 2023, John Carpenter confirmed that he was working on a new project, but refused to reveal any details, adding that it was "shrouded in total mystery, like Skull Island." In May 2023, the series was announced by Carpenter by revealing he directed an episode, via zoom calls, from his home in Los Angeles while filming occurred in Prague, Czech Republic. The series is Carpenter's first project he directed since The Ward (2010). Other episode directors include Michelle Latimer, Jan Pavlacky, and the series writer and showrunner Jordan Roberts. Roberts also served as an executive producer, alongside Carpenter, Sandy King, Tony DiSanto, Patrick Smith, and Andy Portnoy. Carpenter also served as the composer of the series' main theme. Episodes Release John Carpenter's Suburban Screams debuted on Peacock on October 13, 2023, with all six episodes released simultaneously. Reception On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 18% of 17 critics' reviews are positive, with a critics consensus of: "Even with the welcome return of the Master of Horror, Suburban Screams is muffled by rather pedestrian execution". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 30 out of 100 based on 8 critics, indicating "Generally Unfavorable" reviews. Aramide Tinubu of Variety gave a negative review, concluding that "unfortunately, instead of the sinister narratives that fans have come to expect from Carpenter, this series is a cheap display of ghastly crimes." Katie Rife of IGN also gave a negative review, summarzing that the series "is a typical true crime series in every way, except for the participation of John Carpenter and his family. Their contributions are minimal enough, and halfhearted enough, to not make much of a difference, however." Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com simarily felt that the series "doesn't deserve [Carpenter]'s name". Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter also commented on Carpenter's involvement with the series, elaborating that "without the attachment of Carpenter's name, Suburban Screams would just be negligible, but probably unreviewed. With his name, it's disappointingly negligible and here we are." Future In October 2023, executive producer Sandy King expressed interest in making further seasons, saying "I think that it would be really fun to see how deep we can go and how many weird things really happen". References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Alan_Fine] | [TOKENS: 1349] |
Contents Gary Alan Fine Gary Alan Fine (born May 11, 1950, in New York City) is an American sociologist and author. Life and career The son of Bernard David Fine and Bernice Estelle Tanz, Fine grew up in Manhattan and went to the Horace Mann School. He studied psychology at the University of Pennsylvania (Phi Beta Kappa). He attended graduate school at Harvard University from 1972 to 1976 and received his PhD from Harvard in social psychology. His dissertation advisor was the eminent small group theorist Robert F. Bales. In 1976, he became an assistant professor in the sociology department at the University of Minnesota. At various times, he was a visiting professor at Indiana University (1980), the University of Chicago (1985), the University of Bremen (1986), and the University of Iceland (1988). In 1988, he received the American Folklore Society's Opie Award for the Best Scholarly Book in the field of Children's Folklore and Culture for his work With The Boys, an ethnographic study of Little League baseball teams. In 1990, he became the department head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Georgia, a position he held until 1993, after which he remained a professor. In 1990 he was also the President of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interactionism. During the term of 1994 to 1995, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, affiliated with Stanford University. He continued at the University of Georgia but accepted a position at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois beginning in 1997, where in 2005 he was named John Evans Professor. In 2002, he was the President of the Midwest Sociological Society, and in 2005 he was President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. He remains at Northwestern and in 2003 was a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences at Uppsala University in Sweden. In 2005 and 2006, he was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City. He is a former editor of Social Psychology Quarterly, an official journal of the American Sociological Association. He is married to Susan Hirsig Fine and has two children. Academic focus Fine has written ethnographies of a number of diverse small group activities from analyses of Dungeons & Dragons players and mushroom hunters to high school policy debaters and restaurant workers. Fine maintains that these different groups and distinct areas connect: My central research and writing focus is on the relationship between culture and social culture. This interest informs all of my writing from my study of Little League baseball to that of rumor to that of fantasy games. The question I ask is how is expressive culture shaped by the social system in which we all live and how does this social system affect the culture that we create and that we participate in. I examine the way in which small groups affect and give meaning to our shared experiences.[citation needed] His work on rumor has made a substantial contribution to the understanding of urban legends and the transmission of rumors. In 2001, he co-authored a book with University of California-Davis Professor Patricia Turner on rumors in the African-American community and rumors and urban legends held by whites about blacks in the United States. He is currently researching rumors related to the September 11 attacks and terrorism. A recently published manuscript deals with the social production and communication of scientific work at the National Weather Service. Another area of research includes the complicated historical and social reputations of figures such as Thorstein Veblen, Benedict Arnold, Fatty Arbuckle, Herman Melville, Vladimir Nabokov, Warren Harding, Sinclair Lewis, and Henry Ford. On August 4, 2004, several months before the 2004 Presidential Election, he set off a minor storm, especially in the political blogger community,[citation needed] with his op-ed piece in The Washington Post "Ire to the Chief" that argued that the commonly expressed hatreds of presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Richard Nixon reflected their behavior and activities in youth more than their specific policies as president. Fine is also a major figure in the study of the work of Erving Goffman and the theory of symbolic interactionism. He co-edited with Gregory W. H. Smith a major compilation of Goffman's work and of criticism and analysis of his contribution to the social sciences. Together with Kent Sandstrom and Dan Martin, he has produced a forthcoming textbook on symbolic interactionism entitled Symbols, Selves, and Social Reality: A Symbolic Interactionist Approach to Sociology and Social Psychology. Specific areas In addition to his analysis of restaurant establishment culture in his 1996 book Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work, Fine considers himself a sort of amateur restaurant critic. Through 2015, he maintained a blog, called Veal Cheeks, describing his restaurant visits while living in New York City. His writing style, punchy and wry, can also be seen in his review of Eric Schlosser's book, Fast Food Nation, for Reason magazine. Another subject in which Fine has combined his personal and academic interests is art. While researching his book about outsider art Everyday Genius, he became well-acquainted with many of the major figures and artists in that segment of the art world. He studied the cases of major outsider (self-taught) artists like Henry Darger, Bill Traylor, Edgar Tolson, Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Martin Ramirez, Sam Doyle, and Howard Finster. He is also an avid collector of outsider art himself. While researching the book and living in Georgia, he was a member of the Nexus Center for Contemporary Art and a board member at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. He is also currently a board member of the Intuit: Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago. During his research for Gifted Tongues: High School Debate and Adolescent Culture, he followed and observed several high school policy debate teams in Minnesota. The book depicts an activity, although popular in United States, that is often seen as esoteric and confusing. His son, Todd David Fine, as described in the dedication to the book, first saw a video of the activity as a young child while Fine was researching the book. Apparently inspired, in high school, Todd, along with his partners Adam Goldstein and Julie Bashkin, went on to capture the national-circuit debate championship the Tournament of Champions and the Barkley Forum at Emory University, another major championship in the activity. Works References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes] | [TOKENS: 1697] |
Contents Snopes Snopes (/ˈsnoʊps/), formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture. History In 1994, David and Barbara Mikkelson created an urban folklore web site that would become Snopes.com. Snopes was an early online encyclopedia focused on urban legends, which mainly presented search results of user discussions based at first on their contributions to the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban (AFU) where they had been active. The site grew to encompass a wide range of subjects and became a resource to which Internet users began submitting pictures and stories of questionable veracity. According to the Mikkelsons, Snopes predated the search engine concept of fact-checking via search results. David Mikkelson had originally adopted the username "Snopes" (the name of a family of often unpleasant people in the works of William Faulkner) in AFU. In 2002, the site had become known well enough that a television pilot by writer-director Michael Levine called Snopes: Urban Legends was completed with American actor Jim Davidson as host. However, it did not air on major networks. By 2010, the site was attracting seven million to eight million unique visitors in an average month. By mid-2014, Barbara had not written for Snopes "in several years" and David hired users from Snopes.com's message board to assist him in running the site. The Mikkelsons divorced around that time. Christopher Richmond and Drew Schoentrup became part owners in July 2016 with the purchase of Barbara Mikkelson's share by the internet media management company Proper Media. On March 9, 2017, David Mikkelson terminated the brokering agreement with Proper Media, which was also the company that provided Snopes with web development, hosting, and advertising support. The move prompted Proper Media to stop remitting advertising revenue and to file a lawsuit in May. In late June, Bardav—the company founded by David and Barbara Mikkelson in 2003 to own and operate snopes.com—started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to continue operations. They raised $500,000 in 24 hours. Later, in August, a judge ordered Proper Media to disburse advertising revenues to Bardav while the case was pending. In July 2018, Snopes abruptly terminated its contract with Managing Editor Brooke Binkowski, with no explanation.[clarification needed] By the time Snopes co-founder and CEO David Mikkelson confirmed the termination to her, the situation was still not clear. In early 2019, Snopes announced that it had acquired the website OnTheIssues.org, and is "hard at work modernizing its extensive archives". OnTheIssues is a website that seeks to "present all the relevant evidence, assess how strongly each piece supports or opposes a position, and summarize it with an average" in order to "provide voters with reliable information on candidates' policy positions". In 2018 and 2019, Snopes fact-checked several articles from The Babylon Bee, a satirical website, rating them "False". The decision resulted in Facebook adding warnings to links to those articles shared on its site. Snopes added a new rating called "Labeled Satire" to identify satirical stories. In 2019, Snopes was embroiled in legal disputes with Proper Media, with a court case scheduled for spring 2020. By then Proper Media had become a co-owner of Bardav through acquiring Barbara Mikkelson's half-interest share, intending to take overall ownership of Snopes for its own "portfolio of media sites". The move failed as David Mikkelson had no intention to sell his share. As the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, many people tried to "educate themselves on the coronavirus" and find "any comfort, certainty, or hope for a cure [for the coronavirus]".[non-primary source needed] Snopes has around 237 COVID-related fact-checking articles.[year needed] On August 13, 2021, BuzzFeed News published an investigation by reporter Dean Sterling Jones that showed David Mikkelson had used plagiarized material from different news sources in 54 articles between 2015 and 2019 in an effort to increase website traffic. Mikkelson also published plagiarized material under a pseudonym, "Jeff Zarronandia". The BuzzFeed inquiry prompted Snopes to launch an internal review of Mikkelson's articles and to retract 60 of them the day the BuzzFeed story appeared. Mikkelson admitted to committing "multiple serious copyright violations" and apologized for "serious lapses in judgment". He was suspended from editorial duties during the investigation, but remained an officer and stakeholder in the company. On September 16, 2022, David Mikkelson stepped down as CEO and was succeeded by shareholder and board member Chris Richmond. Richmond and fellow shareholder Drew Schoentrup together acquired 100% of the company, ending the ownership dispute which began in 2017. Snopes employees announced their intent to unionize in July 2025 with the Media Guild of the West. The Snopes Guild plans to represent about 10 eligible editorial staff members. Main site Snopes aims to debunk or confirm widely spread urban legends. The site has been referenced by news media and other sites, including CNN, MSNBC, Fortune, Forbes, and The New York Times. By March 2009, the site had more than six million visitors per month. David Mikkelson ran the website from his home in Tacoma, Washington. Mikkelson has stressed the reference portion of the name Urban Legends Reference Pages, indicating that the intention is not merely to dismiss or confirm misconceptions and rumors but to provide evidence for such debunkings and confirmation as well. Where appropriate, pages are generally marked "undetermined" or "unverifiable" when there is not enough evidence to either support or disprove a given claim. In an attempt to demonstrate the perils of over-reliance on the Internet as authority, Snopes assembled a series of fabricated urban folklore tales that it termed "The Repository of Lost Legends". The name was chosen for its acronym, T.R.O.L.L., a reference to the internet slang term troll, meaning an online persona intended to be deliberately provocative or incendiary. In 2009, FactCheck.org reviewed a sample of Snopes's responses to political rumors regarding George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama, and found them to be free from bias in all cases. In 2012, The Florida Times-Union reported that About.com's urban legends researcher found a "consistent effort to provide even-handed analyses" and that Snopes' cited sources and numerous reputable analyses of its content confirm its accuracy. In 2009, Mikkelson has said that the site receives more complaints of liberal bias than conservative bias, but added that the same debunking standards are applied to all political urban legends. Funding In 2016, Snopes said that the entirety of its revenue was derived from advertising. In the same year it received an award of $75,000 from the James Randi Educational Foundation, an organization formed to debunk paranormal claims. In 2017, it raised approximately $700,000 from a crowd-sourced GoFundMe effort and received $100,000 from Facebook as a part of a fact-checking partnership. Snopes also offers a premium membership that disables ads. On February 1, 2019, Snopes announced that it had ended its fact-checking partnership with Facebook. Snopes did not rule out the possibility of working with Facebook in the future but said it needed to "determine with certainty that our efforts to aid any particular platform are a net positive for our online community, publication and staff". Snopes added that the loss of revenue from the partnership meant the company would "have less money to invest in our publication—and we will need to adapt to make up for it". Snopes publishes a yearly summary detailing expenses and sources of income. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyall%27s_wren] | [TOKENS: 1120] |
Contents Lyall's wren Xenicus lyalli Lyall's wren or the Stephens Island wren (Traversia lyalli) is an extinct species of small, flightless passerine bird belonging to the family Acanthisittidae, the New Zealand wrens. It was once found throughout New Zealand, but by the time of its discovery by scientists in 1894, it could only be found on Stephens Island in Cook Strait. Often claimed to be a species driven extinct by only a single individual animal (a lighthouse keeper's cat named Tibbles), it was actually predated upon by the numerous feral cats found throughout the island.[a] The wren was described almost simultaneously by both Walter Rothschild and Walter Buller. It became extinct shortly thereafter. Taxonomy The bird's scientific name commemorates the assistant lighthouse keeper, David Lyall, who first brought the bird to the attention of science. It was described as a distinct genus, Traversia, in honour of naturalist and curio dealer Henry H. Travers, who procured many specimens from Lyall. Traversia is a member of the family Acanthisittidae, or the New Zealand wrens – which are not wrens but a similar-looking lineage of passerines, originating in the Oligocene, and the sister group to all other songbirds. DNA analysis has confirmed that T. lyalli, the only member of its genus, is the oldest and most distinct lineage in the Acanthisittidae. Description Lyall's wren had olive-brown plumage with a yellow stripe through the eye. Its underside was grey in females and brownish-yellow in males and its body feathers were edged with brown. Most distinctively, Lyall's wren was flightless, with a reduced keel on its breastbone and short rounded wings. It is the best known of the five flightless passerines (songbirds) known to science, all of which were inhabitants of islands and are now extinct. The others were three other New Zealand wrens (the long-billed wren and the two species of stout-legged wren) and the long-legged bunting from Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands, all of which were only recently discovered as fossils and became extinct in prehistoric times. Living Lyall's wrens were seen only twice. The lighthouse keeper described the 'rock wren', as he called it, as almost nocturnal, "running around the rocks like a mouse and so quick in its movements that he could not get near enough to hit it with a stick or stone". Distribution Historically, Lyall's wren was found only on Stephens Island. Prehistorically, it had been widespread throughout New Zealand before the land was settled by the Māori. Its bones can be found in caves and deposits left by laughing owls on both main islands. Its disappearance from the mainland was probably due to predation by the Polynesian rat or kiore (Rattus exulans), which had been introduced by the Māori. The presence of a flightless bird on an island 3.2 km from the mainland, along with Hamilton's frog (Leiopelma hamiltoni), which can be killed by exposure to salt water, may seem puzzling, but Stephens Island was connected to the rest of New Zealand during the last glaciation when sea levels were lower. Extinction Much of what is commonly assumed to be established knowledge about this species' extinction is either wrong or has been misinterpreted, starting with the account by Rothschild (1905) who claimed that a single cat had killed all of the birds. The research of Galbreath and Brown (2004) and Medway (2004) has uncovered much of the actual history of the bird during the short time that it was known to researchers. "there is very good reason to believe that the bird is no longer to be found on the island, and, as it is not known to exist anywhere else, it has apparently become quite extinct. This is probably a record performance in the way of extermination." "And we certainly think that it would be as well if the Marine Department, in sending lighthouse keepers to isolated islands where interesting specimens of native birds are known or believed to exist, were to see that they are not allowed to take any cats with them, even if mouse-traps have to be furnished at the cost of the state." Considering Buller's August 1895 note, it is probable that the species was exterminated by feral cats during the winter of 1895. Assuming the date of February 1894 for cat introduction was correct (there were certainly cats around in the winter months of that year), the winter of 1895 would see the second generation of cats born on the island reaching an age where the wren would have made ideal prey. Habitat destruction, sometimes given as an additional reason for the birds' disappearance, was apparently not significant: in 1898, the island was described as heavily forested and there was little interference with habitat beyond the lighthouse and its associated buildings. Large-scale destruction of habitat started in late 1903, by which time T. lyalli was certainly extinct. Specimens About 16–18 specimens (excluding subfossil bones) are now known. They were collected by the lighthouse keeper's cat, by the keepers themselves and by professional collectors. In the media See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Harold_Brunvand] | [TOKENS: 4294] |
Contents Jan Harold Brunvand Jan Harold Brunvand (born March 23, 1933) is an American retired folklorist, researcher, writer, public speaker, and professor emeritus of English at the University of Utah. Brunvand is best known for popularizing the concept of the urban legend, a form of modern folklore or story telling. Urban legends are "too good to be true" stories that travel by word of mouth, by print, or by the internet and are attributed to an FOAF: friend of a friend. "Urban legends," Brunvand says, "have a persistent hold on the imagination because they have an element of suspense or humor, they are plausible and they have a moral." Though criticized for the "popular" rather than "academic" orientation of his books, The Vanishing Hitchhiker and others, Brunvand felt that it was a "natural and worthwhile part of his job as a folklorist to communicate the results of his research to the public." For his lifetime dedication to the field of folklore, which included radio and television appearances, a syndicated newspaper column, and over 100 publications (articles, books, notes and reviews), Brunvand is considered to be "the legend scholar with the greatest influence on twentieth-century media." Early life and education Brunvand was born on March 23, 1933, in Cadillac, Michigan, to Norwegian immigrants Harold N. Brunvand and Ruth Brunvand. He and his two siblings, Tor and Richard, were brought up in Lansing, Michigan. Brunvand graduated from J. W. Sexton High School in Lansing in 1951. From high school, Brunvand attended Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, where, in 1955, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. While at Michigan State, he attended a Reserve Officers' Training Corps program and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant upon graduation. Brunvand went on to earn a Master of Arts degree in English from the same university in 1957. He briefly served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth and was discharged with the rank of 1st Lieutenant. Academic career While attending Michigan State, Brunvand met Richard Dorson, a folklorist and professor, who became a mentor. Brunvand took an undergraduate American Folklore course Dorson offered in the fall quarter of 1954 and, in subsequent semesters, completed two of Dorson's graduate courses in folklore as a special enrollee. The work Brunvand and other classmates did for Dorson's classes included "preparing a large and well organized personal collection of folklore garnered from oral tradition and furnished with informant data and background comments." These papers would later serve as the beginnings of a large archive of folklore housed at Indiana University. On June 10, 1956, Brunvand married Judith Darlene Ast, also a student at Michigan State University. Four days later, the couple left for Oslo, Norway, where Brunvand attended the University of Oslo on a Fulbright scholarship. He spent the year studying folklore. He started publishing in academic publications during this period, notably a paper on Norwegian-American folklore in the archives of Indiana University and one about the Norwegian folk hero Askeladden. In 1957, Brunvand returned to the United States as a graduate student at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. He switched majors, from English to folklore, and took a series of classes offered through the university's summer institute. He worked as an archivist in the Indiana University Folklore Archives from September 1958 to June 1960. During this time, he met Archer Taylor, who, as a visiting professor, taught a course on proverbs and riddles. This course, according to Brunvand, "changed his life." Proverbs became one of Brunvand's favorite topics to study and discuss. In 1961, Brunvand's A Dictionary of Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases from Books Published by Indiana Authors Before 1890 was published as Number 15 of the Indiana University's Folklore Series. Of the book, Brunvand says two things: "I've become better at choosing titles since then," and "The price was $3.00, and it was worth every penny of it. In 1961, Brunvand also received a Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University. His dissertation, The Taming of the Shrew: A Comparative Study of Oral and Literary Versions (Aarne-Thompson type 901), later published by Routledge in 1991, highlighted his interest in the structure, morphology and typology of the folktale. Brunvand taught at the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, from 1961 to 1965. He served as associate editor of the Journal of American Folklore from 1963 to 1967. In 1965, Brunvand taught for a year at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Illinois, focusing on folktales, folklore and literature, before moving with his wife and four children to the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, where he remained a professor until his retirement in 1996. By 1967, Brunvand was a member of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association. He had also served as Book Review Editor for the Journal of American Folklore, which he resigned after receiving a Fulbright Scholarship research grant in 1970 to study folklore in Romania. He also won a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Humanities (Folklore and Popular Culture) that same year. Throughout the next decade, Brunvand focused his research on Romanian folklore, with a particular interest in Romanian house decoration. He returned to Romania in 1973-74 and again in 1981, receiving grants from the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) to continue his studies. His research would later be published in a single volume collection titled Casa Frumoasa: The House Beautiful in Rural Romania, published by East European Monographs in 2003. In 1968, The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction was published by W.W. Norton and Company. Brunvand received an Honorable Mention for this book in a 1969 Chicago Folklore Prize competition. The Chicago Folklore Prize is "supported by an endowment established by the International Folklore Association and is awarded annually by the University of Chicago for an important contribution to the study of folklore." Brunvand's A Guide for Collectors of Folklore in Utah was published by Utah Publications in the American West in 1971. In the years 1973 to 1976, Brunvand, again, took on the role of associate editor for the Journal of American Folklore. He was named Folklore Fellow by the American Folklore Society in 1974 and was elected president of the organization in 1985. From 1977 to 1980, Brunvand served as editor of the Journal of American Folklore, with the goal of making the journal more readable and useful to its major audience, American folklorists. He widened the scope of the journal by including articles written by those outside folklore, but whose work was "relevant to that being done by professional folklorists." He wanted to emphasize folklore and literature, folklore and history, folklife, festival and modern folklore. In 1976, Brunvand's book Folklore: A Study and Research Guide was published by St. Martin's Press. The book, intended for undergraduate folklore students, was a research tool with a bibliographic guide and tips for researching term papers. Brunvand edited two other textbooks: Readings in American Folklore, published by W.W. Norton and Company in 1979, American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, published by Garland in 1996. "Mr. Urban Legend" While teaching folklore at the University of Utah, Brunvand noticed a disconnect with his students and their views toward folklore. "They always seemed to think that folklore belonged to somebody else, usually in the past, that was something quaint and outdated." He began asking his students to think about and discuss stories from their own lives. These stories helped form the basis of a collection which Brunvand later included in several popular books on the topic of urban legends. In 1981, Brunvand's first book devoted to urban legends was published. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings helped to popularize the topic for a student audience. Urban legends, Brunvand explains, are "kissing cousins of myths, fairy tales and rumors. Legends differ from rumors because the legends are stories, with a plot. And unlike myths and fairy tales, they are supposed to be current and true, events rooted in everyday reality that at least could happen." Urban legends reflect modern-day societal concerns, hopes and fears, but are "weird whoppers we tell one another, believing them to be factual." Over the next two decades, Brunvand added to the collection with "new" urban legends: The Choking Doberman and Other "New" Urban Legends, The Big Book of Urban Legends (which was formatted as a comic book), The Mexican Pet: More "New" Urban Legends, Curses! Broiled Again!, The Baby Train: And Other Lusty Urban Legends, Too Good to be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends, and The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story!. He made several appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and, in 1987, began a twice-weekly syndicated newspaper column called Urban Legends. He participated in countless radio talk shows and dozens of press interviews, educating people about this pass-along folk narrative that, typically involves people misunderstanding or making false assumptions about a story they heard. They forget details and fill in the gaps by inventing what they are missing to make sense of the story. Though criticized for the popular orientation of his books, Brunvand was dedicated to publicizing the field of folklore, exploring the roots of the stories, where possible, and, in some cases debunking them. "Folklorists fill different educational roles," Brunvand told members of The Missouri Folklore Society in 2003, "sometimes in classrooms, but often in a more public forum. I believe that the public and media image of what a folklorist does is in fact part of what we should be doing, whether we were trained specifically for it or not, whether we work in academe or not, and whether we like it or not." Brunvand and his books became so popular, that, when Richard Wolkomir dubbed him "Mr. Urban Legend" in an article for the Smithsonian, the title was later added to book jackets and other publicity. In an article for Western Folklore, Brunvand mentioned a notice he found on a computer newsgroup dated 1 March 1989, presumably an insider's joke: "I think Jan Harold Brunvand, alleged author of The Choking Doberman, is an urban legend. Has anybody ever actually seen this guy?" A Harvard Lampoon publication, Mediagate, parodied urban legend books with this fake publisher's notice: "Bookman Publishing's Catalog for Fall '87: The Embarrassing Fart and More New Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand. Yet another set of rumors, tall tales, and fourth-hand hearsay compiled by the author of The Vanishing Hitchhiker. Includes more recent urban legends such as the Senile President, the Adulterous Evangelist, and the Smelly Gym Sock in the Big Mac. 233 pages hardbound. $34.95 (Harvard 1988: 229)." Post-retirement career Brunvand retired from the University of Utah in 1996, but continued doing some research and writing as professor emeritus of English. He frequently writes for publications dedicated to skiing, vintage automobiles and fly fishing. Once in a while, Brunvand's hobbies and academic interests intersect, notably with an article in The American Fly Fisher debunking a fake quotation by Thoreau. He writes a series of columns on Seniors Skiing.com. Brunvand was a guest on National Public Radio's All Things Considered in September 1999. He spoke to Noah Adams about his book Too Good to be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends. His Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, illustrated by Randy Hickman, was published by ABC-CLIO in 2001. He gave the keynote address at the 2003 meeting of the Missouri Folklore Society. He was a speaker at the World Skeptics Congress in Italy in 2004. His is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. In 2003 Brunvand was awarded CSICOP's Distinguished Skeptic Award. Brunvand's book Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends was published in 2004 by W.W. Norton and Company. Personal In 2003, Brunvand entered the Trout Bum Tournament sponsored by Fly Rod and Reel. He participated in the Solo-Angler category. Known during the tournament as the Vanishing Fly Fisher (a nod to his book, The Vanishing Hitchhiker), Brunvand spent 10 days alone fishing some of his favorite spots in Utah: Mammoth Creek, Gooseberry Creek, Price River, and Antimony River (where he "fell twice and bashed his knee, though the injury wasn't anything a cold towel and a cold beer wouldn't fix"). "Day 10," Jim Reilly wrote in an article describing the competition," was the last we heard from Jan. We assume he made it home, but maybe he...vanished." His favorite hobbies are fly fishing and skiing. He and his wife, Judith, continue to reside in Salt Lake City, Utah. Popular books about urban legends The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings is a book intended to introduce the idea of urban legends to the general public. Included in the book are such chilling and humorous stories as "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," "The Economical Car," "The Ghost Airliner," The Girl with the Beehive Hairdo," "The Solid Cement Cadillac," and "The Killer in the Back Seat." Brunvand's approach, according to reviewer Janet L. Langlois, "sensitizes the reader in a highly readable and effective way to both the dynamic narrative process in an urban context and the discipline of folklore and folklife studies." Some of these stories previously appeared in an article Brunvand wrote for the June 1980 issue of Psychology Today. As with Heard About the Solid Cement Cadillac or the Nude in the Camper?, Brunvand categorizes the different legends included in The Vanishing Hitchhiker into classic urban legend types. For each legend type, Brunvand offers samples that show variations on the legends themselves, historical evidence of how the legend may have originated (often with European or East Asian roots), and an explanation of what the legend might mean in an urban or modern context. Although recognized by critics for its usefulness as an introductory volume and reference point for expanding the field of folklore, reviewers cautioned that The Vanishing Hitchhiker lacked the depth necessary for people actively researching urban legends. Janet L. Langlois, for example, wondered what criteria Brunvand used in selecting stories for the book, as well as what made the legends American, urban and modern. Reviewer Gary Alan Fine wrote, "The paperback edition makes an excellent supplementary reading for introductory folklore students. It's all good fun, and Brunvand, folklore's Carl Sagan, should thrive and prosper, letting the all-purpose intelligentsia know that folklore is just as much fun as interplanetary travel and not nearly as expensive." To this, Brunvand countered: "I really won't think I have arrived until they refer to Carl Sagan as 'The Jan Brunvand of astronomy.'" Patricia T. O'Connor, writer for The New York Times, described The Choking Doberman and Other "New" Urban Legends as "a collection of 'urban legends,' fictitious narratives that are passed from person to person in the guise of true stories and sometimes persist until they reach the status of folklore." These stories are bizarre but believable and often attributed to a friend of a friend (FOAF). Like in his book, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, Brunvand provided the reader with a survey of urban legends, stories such as "The Choking Doberman," "The Poison Dress," and "The Death of Little Mikey." Each story, with its accompanying variations, are categorized into themes and motifs: victimized women and children, food and beverage contamination, fearful encounters, sexual embarrassment, and humorous retribution. Though Robert D. Bethke called The Choking Doberman "the kind of work one immediately wants to share with friends," he also criticized the work for the "rhetorical devises" Brunvand used "apparently to suit the popular market." Critics also pointed out that Brunvand's urban legend books raise a question about race and stereotypes that, to some, are left unaddressed. Bethke wrote "We are told that the stories are projective of American popular culture, but precisely what racial segment of the culture participates in the currency of such stories? Specifically, we are dealing with a phenomenon like the ethnic joke, examples of which are told by target groups, or is the urban legend essentially a mainstream occurrence? I don't think the final word has been written yet on the genre, but Jan Brunvand has made admirable strides toward that end." The Mexican Pet: "New" Urban Legends is Brunvand's third book in a series of books about urban legends meant to appeal to a general audience. This time, Brunvand includes stories collected from colleagues, students, professional newscasters and appeals through his own publications, lectures and media appearances. He organized the book in thematic categories: animal stories, automobiles, horrors, contaminations, sex and scandal, crime, and products, professionals and personalities. There are new versions of earlier legends, newly obtained pieces and leftovers from his files. Among the stories included in the book are: "The Mexican Pet," "Cabbage Patch Kids' death certificates," "The Green Stamps." Many of the stories have been disseminated through print and broadcast media. Brunvand wrote in a 2003 article, "Nowadays it would be naive to ask for mere press releases and print articles when most people turn to websites and on-line databases for information." He recognized that urban legend reference sites, like Snopes.com provide readers with far more timely examples and current information than he could keep up with in his books. Academic books on American folklore The Study of American Folklore. An Introduction is a book intended for students of folklore with a particular emphasis on American Folklore as transmitted in the English language. For the purposes of this book, Brunvand defines folklore as "those materials in culture that circulate traditionally among members of any group in different versions, whether in oral form or by means of customary example." The book is divided into three main categories: verbal (dialect and speech habits, proverbs, riddles, tales, rhymes, folk-songs, ballads), partly verbal (superstitions, customs, dances, plays), and non-verbal (gestures, music, handcrafts, folk architecture, food). Within the text, Brunvand provided for the reader information on data collecting methods, a general assessment of folklore material, bibliographic essays, and extensive lists of books and articles. To some, like reviewer Elliott Oring, the classification system used by Brunvand made The Study of American Folklore more of an "index" of American folklore rather than a "study" of it. Reviewer Kenneth Laine Ketner criticized the book for its failure to make explicit the background theory used to evaluate the works and classification system included in the book, contradictions in detail and narrative, its authoritarian tone, and its charismatic or arbitrary approach to knowledge with serious ethnocentric biases. Peter Tokofsky, in his article Introducing Folklore: A Review Essay, suggested that "the longevity and, presumably, continuing strong sales of the Brunvand text seems to confirm that introducing folklore by way of genres remains an effective and, for many, a preferred teaching tool even if it does not reflect the most current theoretical perspectives." American Folklore: An Encyclopedia is an illustrated volume that contains within its pages more than 500 articles covering American and Canadian folklore and folklife. Subject areas include holidays, festivals, rituals to crafts, music, dance and occupations. The book provides short bibliographies and cross-references for further research. Selected works References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candyman_(film_series)] | [TOKENS: 1689] |
Contents Candyman (film series) Candyman is an American supernatural horror franchise originating from the 1985 short story "The Forbidden" from the collection Books of Blood by Clive Barker, about the legend of the "Candyman", the ghost of an artist and son of a slave who was murdered in the late 19th century. Its film adaptation, Candyman, directed by Bernard Rose in 1992, starred Tony Todd as the title character. Although the film initially underperformed at the American box office, it became a cult classic. A novelization and a comic adaptation of the film were released in the same year. Two sequels, Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995) and Candyman 3: Day of the Dead (1999), were released. A direct sequel to the original Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta and produced by Jordan Peele, was released in 2021. Films Candyman, the first film in the series, is a 1992 horror film, serving as a loose adaptation of Clive Barker's 1985 short story "The Forbidden" of the collection Books of Blood. The film follows a graduate student, Helen Lyle, who is studying urban legends along with her colleague Bernadette. She takes a strong interest in learning about a mysterious hook-handed murderer coined as "The Candyman" in the Cabrini Green urban project dwelling which many of the residents feared lived behind the mirrors and the walls of the apartments randomly killing them 'gutting' them with his hook after chanting his name 5 times in a mirror. Helen becomes intrigued by the mythical story that she jokingly summons him in denial and disbelief, later to learn who was really behind the mirror, questioning her reality. Farewell to the Flesh is the second film in the series. The film follows the story of a school teacher, Annie Tarrant, who comes to learn about her family's past after losing her father due to his obsession with the Candyman. She denies his existence after hearing her students talk about him and learning that one of her students was obsessed with him. She speaks his name to prove he does not exist, but later finds out who Candyman is. Day of the Dead is the third film in the series. The story continues with Annie Tarrant's daughter, Caroline Mckeever, who is now an adult. She denies Candyman's existence by protecting her family's bloodline as her business partner Miguel uses the story of her Great Great Grandfather Daniel Robitaille/Candyman in his art exhibit for profit. Caroline soon learns why her mother tried to destroy the myth of Candyman but is caught in his web of deceptive murders, framing her in order for her to submit to become immortal as a family with him in death. A fourth film in the series was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Monkeypaw Productions and was released on August 27, 2021. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars in the film, while Tony Todd returns to the eponymous role. It is a direct sequel to the first film, taking place twenty-seven years later, in Cabrini Green, Chicago. A young, over-confident visual artist named Anthony McCoy struggles to find inspiration to get him further exposure. He learns about an old urban legend that took place in the project housing developments at Cabrini Green of a grad student named Helen Lyle who became mentally insane during her research and sacrificed herself to save a baby, which sparks his interest. He further researches the information which leads him to encounter a neighborhood laundromat owner who also reveals his version of the urban legend, which is learned to be of an amputated hook-handed man in the 1970s named Sherman Fields who was wrongfully murdered at the hands of Chicago police officers which Cabrini Green residents believed him to be "The Candyman" who harmed children with razor blades in candy. Anthony becomes obsessed with these urban legend findings as he uses them for his artwork presentation and to influence the summoning of the spirit of 'The Candyman', but later realizes the consequences of his actions as he learns the real truth behind the legend by his hallucinations, which in turn becomes a deadly reality. The 2021 film reinterprets the Candyman legend by highlighting generational trauma and racial violence, positioning the figure as a reflection of historical injustices against Black communities. According to Virginia Madsen, Bernard Rose originally wanted the first sequel Candyman 2 to be a prequel showing Candyman and Helen's "look-alike" falling in love, but the idea was turned down because the studio was worried about how a fully-fledged interracial romance would be received. A possible fourth film was in development in 2004; according to Tony Todd, it was intended to be set in New England at a women's college, and focus on a professor who is a descendant of Candyman but has no idea who he is, with Todd describing "the initial image [being] of Candyman in a blizzard". The film was stuck in development hell. The slasher crossover film Freddy vs. Jason (2003) also inspired Miramax to want to create a Candyman vs. Hellraiser crossover, but Clive Barker, originator of both franchises, had recommended against it. A crossover with the Leprechaun film series was also considered, but Tony Todd immediately flat out refused to participate in such a project, saying he had too much respect for his character to see him used for such a purpose. Cast and crew Critical and public response Reception Music Candyman (1992) and Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh soundtracks were composed by Philip Glass. According to Glass, "it has become a classic, so I still make money from that score, get checks every year". Tony Todd confirmed in an interview with IGN that a limited edition featuring 7500 copies of the film's soundtrack was released in February 2015. The composition "Candyman's Suite: Helen's Theme" became a widely popular theme song for Halloween and was often featured in a few television commercials and series including in one episode of American Horror Story: Asylum. Candyman: Day of the Dead original score soundtrack was composed by Adam Gorgoni. Candyman (2021) original score soundtrack was composed by Chicago musician Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe who used solo compositions based on voice and extended modular synthesis techniques. He expressed in an interview with fellow musician DeForrest Brown Jr. that he used field recordings of Cabrini Green to capture the essence and spirit of the neighborhood and layered it as textural elements on top of the main instruments. In January 2022, Variety reported that Candyman's film score, briefly made the shortlist for the 2022 Academy Awards in the category of Best Original Score, however did not make the official final ballot list. Phillips Glass' score "Helen's Theme/Music Box" was also reimagined by Lowe as a new interpolation on the soundtrack as well as in one scene and end credits of the film. Other media A board game based on Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh was released during the mid-1990s as a promotional item for the film of the same name. The game features a board, 1 die and cards (Hook, Candyman, Voodoo, Mansion Key) that will impact the player or others. The game's premise is stated as "to win, player must proceed clockwise along the streets of New Orleans and get to the mansion with the key card in order to unlock the secret to Candyman's power". Development and Legacy of the 2021 Reboot Candyman (2021), Nia DaCosta's direction, and Jordan Peele's and Win Rosenfeld's co-writing, were a sequel as well as a spiritual prolongation of the first film. This project was praised for a variety of aspects such as visual style, social commentary, and the actors' performances, and it was also of historical significance as DaCosta became the first Black woman to direct a movie that ranked first in the U.S. box office. The success of the film made the franchise popular among a new generation and confirmed the status of Candyman as a culturally relevant horror property. See also References External links |
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Contents List of cryptids Cryptids are animals or other beings whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated by science. Cryptozoology, the study of cryptids, is a pseudoscience claiming that such beings may exist somewhere in the wild; it has been widely critiqued by scientists. The subculture is regularly criticized for reliance on anecdotal information and because in the course of investigating animals that most scientists believe are unlikely to have existed, cryptozoologists do not follow the scientific method. Many scientists have criticized the plausibility of cryptids due to lack of physical evidence, likely misidentifications and misinterpretation of stories from folklore. While biologists regularly identify new species following established scientific methodology, cryptozoologists focus on entities mentioned in the folklore record and rumor. List Papua New Guinea Angola The Democratic Republic of the Congo See also Notes References Sources External links |
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Contents SCP Foundation The SCP Foundation is a fictional organization featured in stories created by contributors on the SCP Wiki, a wiki-based collaborative writing project, launched in 2008. Within the project's shared universe, the SCP (Special Containment Procedures) Foundation[c] is a secret organization that is responsible for capturing, containing, and studying various paranormal, supernatural, and other mysterious phenomena (known as "anomalies" or "SCPs"), while also keeping their existence hidden from the rest of society. The collaborative writing project includes elements of many genres such as horror, science fiction, and urban fantasy. The majority of works on the SCP Wiki consist of thousands of SCP files: mock confidential scientific reports that document various SCPs and associated containment procedures. The website also contains "Foundation Tales", short stories featuring various characters and settings in the SCP universe. The wiki's literary works have been praised for their ability to convey horror through a quasi-scientific and academic writing style, as well as for their high standards of quality. The SCP universe has inspired numerous fan-made adaptations in varying forms of media, including literature, music, short films, and video games. Overview The fictional setting of the SCP universe revolves around the findings and activities of the SCP Foundation, an international non-governmental secret society consisting of a scientific research institution with a paramilitary intelligence agency to support their goals. The Foundation operates independently of any national government, answering only to their own mysterious 13-member leadership body called the O5 Council, also known as the Overseers. This organization is dedicated to protecting the world by capturing and containing various unexplained paranormal phenomena (referred to as "anomalies", "SCP objects", "SCPs", or informally as "skips") which display supernatural abilities or other extremely unusual properties that defy conventional scientific laws. They include living beings, objects, places, abstract concepts, and incomprehensible entities. If left uncontained, many of the more dangerous anomalies would pose a serious threat to human beings or even all life on Earth. All information regarding the existence of the Foundation and SCPs are strictly classified and withheld from the general public in order to prevent mass hysteria that would supposedly occur if they were leaked, and allow human civilization to continue functioning under a masquerade of "normalcy". Whenever an anomaly is discovered, teams of Foundation agents (either undercover field agents, regular containment teams, or if necessary, the elite Mobile Task Forces - MTF) are deployed to either collect and transport the object or entity to one of the organization's many secret facilities, or to contain it at its location of discovery if transportation is not possible. Civilian eyewitnesses are frequently interrogated and then dosed with amnestic drugs to erase their memories of anomalous events. At the Foundation's secret containment and research facilities, SCPs are locked in captivity by armed security guards, and studied by scientists to develop better containment methods for them. The Foundation's laboratory research projects frequently exploit disposable human test subjects (usually unwitting convict prisoners) acquired from around the world known as "D-class personnel", forcing them into performing slave labor and participating in experiments with potentially dangerous SCPs in order to avoid risking the safety of the Foundation's employees. Apart from the Foundation itself, there are numerous rival organizations (collectively known as Groups of Interest, or GOIs) actively involved with the paranormal world. Examples include the Chaos Insurgency, a terrorist splinter group of ex-Foundation defectors who capture and weaponize SCPs; the Global Occult Coalition (GOC), a secret paramilitary agency of the United Nations which specializes in destroying supernatural threats instead of containing them; and the Serpent's Hand, a militant group which advocates for the rights of anomalous beings, resisting both the Foundation's and GOC's efforts to suppress paranormal activity worldwide. Other GOIs seek to exploit anomalies by producing or selling them for profit, or using them to serve their own religious, political, or ideological goals. History The SCP Foundation originated in the "paranormal" /x/ forum of 4chan in June 2007, where the very first SCP file, SCP-173, was posted by an anonymous user (later identified as Wesley "Moto42" Williams), accompanied by an image of the sculpture "Untitled 2004" by Japanese artist Izumi Katō. Although displeased with the unlicensed use of his art, Katō allowed the use of the photo explicitly for the noncommercial purposes of the community. Though SCP-173 was initially a stand-alone short story, many additional SCP files were created shortly after; those new SCPs copied SCP-173's style and were set within the same fictional universe. In July 2008, the SCP Wiki was transferred to its current Wikidot website after the wiki hosting service EditThis switched to a paid model. New Wikidot wikis, by default, made use of the CC BY-SA 3.0 license at the time. The SCP staff therefore "accidentally" adopted this license for SCP media. By 2009, a large number of articles had been written but the quality of those posts was often poor. A mass edit conducted from September to December of that year saw every article reviewed and a large number "decommissioned". A repository of the removed articles is preserved at SCP Classic. The development of evaluation processes, including the sharing of ideas and constructive criticism, has since allowed the community to maintain a high quality level for new articles. The community continued to grow and opened branches in additional languages from the early 2010s. In particular, a surge of new members arrived in 2012 after the launch of SCP – Containment Breach. The original SCP-173 text was released into the creative commons by its author explicitly in 2013, in an effort to address the uncertain license status of some earlier material. This debate over licensing led to a dispute between the English and Russian language branches in 2017, which briefly shut down the Russian version. In 2022, an article in American Journalism suggested that the SCP Foundation may have become the largest collaborative writing project in history. Writing style On the SCP Wiki, the majority of works are stand-alone articles detailing the "Special Containment Procedures" of a given SCP object. In a typical article, an SCP object is assigned a unique identification number (e.g. "SCP-173") and a "containment class" (e.g. Euclid)[d] based on the difficulty of containing it. The documentation then outlines proper containment procedures and safety measures, and a description of the SCP object in question. Addenda (such as images, research data, interviews, history, or status updates) may also be attached to the document. The reports are written in a scientific tone and often censor words with black redaction bars and "data expunged" markings, to give the in-universe impression of sensitive information not to be disclosed to lesser-privileged Foundation staff. As of November 2025,[update] articles exist for over 9,800 SCP objects;[e] new articles are written and published frequently by contributors. The SCP Wiki also contains over 6,300 short stories referred to as "Foundation Tales". The stories are set within the larger SCP universe, and often focus on the exploits of various Foundation staff members, SCP entities, and objects, among other recurring characters and settings. Gregory Burkart, writing for Blumhouse Productions, noted that some of the Foundation Tales had a dark and bleak tone, while others were "surprisingly light-hearted". The SCP universe has neither a central canon nor the ability to establish one due to its community-oriented nature, but stories on the wiki are often linked together to create larger narratives. Contributors have the ability to create "canons", which are clusters of SCPs and Foundation Tales with similar locations, characters, or central plots; many of these canons have hub pages that explain their basic concept and provide information such as timelines and character lists. The genres of the SCP Wiki have variously been described as science fiction, urban fantasy, horror, and creepypasta. Community The current Wikidot website contains numerous standard wiki features such as keyword searches and article lists. The wiki also contains a news hub, guides for writers and a central discussion forum. The wiki is moderated by staff teams; each team is responsible for a different function such as community outreach and discipline. Wikidot users are required to submit an application before they are allowed to post content. Every article on the wiki is assigned a discussion page, where members can evaluate and provide constructive criticism on submitted stories. The discussion pages are frequently used by authors to improve their stories. Members also have the ability to "upvote" articles they like and to "downvote" articles they dislike; articles that receive too many net downvotes are deleted. Writers from the Daily Dot and Bustle have noted that the website maintains strict quality control standards, and that sub-par content tends to be quickly removed. Authors who have written for the site include Max Landis, qntm, and Adrian Hon. The Wikidot website routinely holds creative writing contests to encourage submissions. The first of these was held in 2011 to decide which article would be assigned the "SCP-1000" label. There have since been additional competitions; for example, in 2014, the SCP Wiki held a "Dystopia Contest" in which its members were encouraged to submit writings about the Foundation set in a bleak or degraded world. Apart from the original English wiki, 15 other official language branches exist, and some of their articles have been translated into English.[a] The Wanderer's Library is a sister site and spin-off of the SCP Wiki. It uses the same setting as the SCP universe, but is made up of fantastical stories rather than scientific reports. The SCP community also maintains a role-playing site, a forum on Reddit, and accounts on, Facebook, Twitter, and Bluesky. Legal disputes The SCP Foundation website and its contents are under a Creative Commons license, and none of the characters or assets associated with it are trademarked by the Foundation itself. In 2019, a Russian resident named Andrey Duksin filed a trademark for the name and logo of the SCP Foundation. Although the Creative Commons license grants the right to sell merchandise based on the SCP intellectual property, Duksin used his trademark in Russia to suppress competition by stopping others from selling merchandise within Russia. In addition, Duksin threatened to shut down the official Russian website of the SCP Foundation. The SCP Foundation launched a fundraiser to raise funds to combat Duksin legally, with an initial goal of $50,000. In 2020, because of contributions by fans and members of the community, including the YouTuber Markiplier, $140,000 was raised. In November 2021, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service ruled against Duksin. It found that he did not commission or create the SCP name or logo, had not been transferred the rights to it, and that his actions may constitute an act of unfair competition. However, his trademark continued to stand in Russia. An article in Case Western Law Review came to the conclusion that the court's actions were broadly in line with Russian indulgence of trademark and patent trolls, as Russia does not usually deregister illegitimately obtained trademarks. The SCP Wiki successfully appealed in April 2022, and Duksin's trademark was ultimately cancelled that October. The original SCP-173, posted in 2007, used an image of the sculpture Untitled 2004 by the artist Izumi Katō, which was photographed by Keisuke Yamamoto. The creator of the post, Wesley "Moto42" Williams, did not have the rights to either the sculpture or the photograph that depicted it. Beginning in 2013 both the Japanese and English branches attempted to make contact with Katō to ask permission, but they received no reply. The English staff were eventually able to contact him in September 2014, and he "reluctantly" allowed the community to use the image for non-commercial purposes. He announced that he would take legal action if someone attempted to use it for a commercial purpose. The image remained on the site with a warning attached until February 2022, when staff made the decision to remove it. The SCP Foundation said on Twitter that the artistic vision of Izumi Katō was "forcibly hijacked" by the statue's association with SCP, and that they could not "fully undo the damage done". At the request of Wesley Williams, a new image was not placed in the article, so that readers would have to imagine it themselves. Many original interpretations of SCP-173 were created by the community in the wake of the decision. Reception The SCP Foundation has received largely positive reviews. Michelle Starr of CNET praised the creepy nature of the stories. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, writing for the Daily Dot, praised the originality of the wiki and described it as the "most uniquely compelling horror writing on the Internet". She noted that the series rarely contained gratuitous gore. Rather, the horror of the series was often established through the reports' "pragmatic" and "deadpan" style, as well as through the inclusion of detail. Lisa Suhay, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, also noted the SCP Wiki's "tongue-in-cheek style". Alex Eichler, writing for io9, noted that the series had varying levels of quality and that some of the reports were dull or repetitive. However, he praised the SCP stories for not becoming overly dark, and for containing more light-hearted reports. Additionally, he praised the wide variety of concepts covered in the report and said that the wiki contained writings that would appeal to all readers. Leigh Alexander, writing for The Guardian, noted that the wiki's voting system allows readers to easily locate content which "the community thinks are best and most scary." Winston Cook-Wilson, writing for Inverse, compared the SCP stories to the writings of American author H. P. Lovecraft. Like Lovecraft, SCP casefiles generally lack action sequences and are written in a pseudo-academic tone. Cook-Wilson argued that both Lovecraft's works and those of the SCP Wiki were strengthened by the tensions between their detached scientific tone and the unsettling, horrific nature of the stories being told. Bryan Alexander, writing in The New Digital Storytelling, stated that the SCP Foundation is possibly "the most advanced achievement of wiki storytelling" due to the large-scale and recurring process through which the wiki's user-base creates literary content. Media inspired by the SCP Foundation The works present on the SCP Foundation website have been the subject of numerous independent adaptations and inspired some original works: Literature Theater Video games Web videos Podcasts Video games See also Notes References External links |
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Contents List of creepypastas Page version status This is an accepted version of this page Creepypastas are horror-related legends or images that have been copied and pasted around the Internet. These Internet entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal stories intended to scare, frighten, or discomfort readers. List of creepypastas The Backrooms is a short passage originally posted to 4chan's /x/ board in 2019 as a caption to a picture of a hallway with yellow carpets and wallpaper. The story purports that by "noclip[ping] out of reality", one may enter a realm known as the Backrooms, an empty wasteland of corridors and rooms with nothing but "the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in", as well as malevolent entities that hunt the traveler across three separate areas of the Backrooms, "Levels 0 through 2". Over time, The Backrooms has been expanded into a mythos, with online writers adding information on new levels, entities, items, and phenomena within the Backrooms. The location in the original photograph that spawned the Backrooms story was unidentified until May 29, 2024, when a team of Discord users found that the photograph was initially posted in 2003 to a blog documenting the renovation of a HobbyTown franchise in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Backrooms images are an example of liminal spaces. On January 7, 2022, YouTuber and VFX artist Kane Parsons (known online as Kane Pixels) uploaded a short horror film titled The Backrooms (Found Footage), which follows a cameraman who records his experience in the Backrooms after accidentally noclipping in. Since then, it has garnered acclaim from the viewers, with over 57 million views as of February 2024. Since the original upload, Parsons has expanded upon his take on the Backrooms lore with more videos, including a film adaptation based on his shorts, which was announced by A24 in February 2023, and began filming in the summer of 2025 in Vancouver, Canada under the working title Effigy. Abandoned by Disney is a 2012 creepypasta written by Slimebeast. The story revolves around the protagonist who decides to investigate an abandoned Disneyland resort called Mowgli's Palace and finds scrawled text about Disney abandoning the place. In the story, the protagonist finds a "mascots" room and meets with a Donald Duck head with a human skull inside and an inverted-colored Mickey Mouse. In 2018, the story, along with its other installments, was adapted into an ebook without any copyrights under the name Dandyland. Ever Dream This Man? or just "This Man", is a conceptual art project and internet hoax created by Italian sociologist and marketer Andrea Natella in 2008. It revolves around an enigmatic person who reportedly appeared in the dreams of numerous people. The Expressionless is a story that was added to the Creepypasta Tumblr in June 2012. The story is set in June 1972, where a woman with a face reminiscent of a mannequin appeared in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, wearing only a gown drenched in blood and with a kitten clamped in her jaw. She pulled out the animal, threw it aside, and then collapsed. The doctors decided that sedating her would be the best option, but after attempting to do so, she rose from the bed. The staff's attempts to restrain her did not stop her from brutally massacring and cannibalizing the majority of the present personnel using her sharp teeth. A doctor who survived the attack nicknamed her "The Expressionless", as throughout the entire incident, even during the peak of her furious assault against the staff, the woman's face remained completely absent of expression. "I Feel Fantastic" is a surrealist music video and viral video created by John Bergeron in 2004. The video features an animatronic named Tara the Android, an attempt at "the world's first pop star android" according to Bergeron. I Feel Fantastic or "Please," is one of five videos by Bergeron with the other videos being on his website and available on DVD. One of the videos got re-uploaded to YouTube titled "I Feel Fantastic" with no context by Creepyblog in 2009 and quickly got popular for the Android's uncanniness and the video's creepiness. The video's character, Tara the Android, has since made cameos in other media, such as Broadcast Signal Intrusion and Smiling Friends. The Interface Series is a science fiction horror story that was posted in short installments on Reddit, known for its unusual format of being spread across various discussion threads, often considered a form of "alternate reality game"; the story explores themes of mind control, MKUltra experiments, and entities called "flesh interfaces", written by an anonymous author under the pseudonym "_9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9". Jeff the Killer is a story accompanied by an image of the title character, a teenager named Jeffrey Woods who's attacked by a group of bullies, disfigures himself and kills his family. He then becomes a serial killer. The story quickly became one of the most popular creepypastas and inspired many other stories, including Jane the Killer. The character of Jeff was created by DeviantArt user "sesseur", the pseudonym of Jeff Case of Auburndale, Florida. The MOMO Challenge or just Momo Challenge and Momo is an internet urban legend, hoax, and creepypasta about a human or humanoid user named "Momo" which tells people to harm themselves in a similar vein to the Blue Whale Challenge. Funland is a story that was made as a creepypasta by Daron Silvers in 2016. The story is set originally in the late 1990s in Tewksbury, Massachusetts and is centered around a Boy and his friends. Shortly after the park they went to as children closes down, they came back years later to discover an old animatronic dog that was nostalgic to them. In the turn of events, the dog becomes alive and chases them out of the park, leading to bad luck for each person who went to the park that day. The Midnight Game is a list of instructions that detail how to invite a demonic entity known as "The Midnight Man" into someone's home using a candle, matches, salt, paper, a wooden front door and a drop of your own blood. Upon knocking on the door 22 times, the final knock occurring upon midnight, you must survive until 3:33AM against The Midnight Man. The Midnight Game first emerged onto 4Chan's /x/ board sometime in early to mid 2010 , and gained quick infamy across 4chan and other sites like Reddit, YouTube, Tumblr, and Facebook. It was adapted into several forms of media including videogames, books and movies. Robert the Doll is said to be a supernatural doll that has abilities. According to rumors, the doll sometimes giggles, mutilates his former owner Robert Eugene Otto's toys, attacks people, and even curses them. The Rake is a strange humanoid creature described as resembling something between a naked man and a large, hairless dog whose sightings have been reported on four different continents, occasionally being referred to as a "skin-walker", with the earliest known account being a mariner's log in 1691. Named for its massive, incredibly sharp claws, the Rake lacerates its victims in their sleep and in some cases, speaks to them in a shrill voice. Those fortunate enough to survive an encounter with the Rake usually end up traumatized by its appearance and behavior. In 2018, a film based on the Rake was released on Tubi and Amazon Prime. The film was poorly received by critics. The Russian Sleep Experiment tells of Soviet agents and scientists experimenting on both political prisoners and prisoners of war during World War II, in which the prisoners are kept in a sealed-off room which was filled with an experimental gas to prevent sleep. This mysterious gas turns the prisoners into violent, zombie-like monsters who are addicted to the gas. In the end, the commander demands a researcher to enter the room and start killing the prisoners, with one of them uttering "So nearly free" or "Finally put to rest" before they die. The SCP Foundation is a fictional organization that captures, contains, and studies supernatural phenomena, keeping them secret from the rest of the world. The SCP Foundation is part of a collaborative writing project on the SCP Wiki. Created by Toronto-based horror illustrator Trevor Henderson in 2018, Siren Head is a tall, thin, skeletal figure with rotting skin and two sirens for a head. The sirens sometimes blare random words in a "staticky" voice; in other stories, they scream garbled music and radio reports, the sounds of people screaming for help, or Emergency Alert System broadcasts. Siren Head became popular online in 2020, to Henderson's surprised delight. It was featured in viral YouTube and TikTok videos, as well as numerous indie games with retro aesthetics, leading Henderson to gain many teenage fans. Some YouTubers made a 12-foot (3.7 m) model of the monster, and one-man developer Modus Interactive created a Siren Head video game which was played by YouTubers Markiplier and Jacksepticeye. Writers for PC Gamer and The Daily Dot have compared the creepypasta to Slender Man. It was the topic of an episode of the PBS show Monstrum. In a Viz Media YouTube video where Japanese horror mangaka Junji Ito was shown pictures of internet monsters, he deemed Siren Head the best. Slender Man is a lanky humanoid with no distinguishable facial features, who wears a trademark black suit. The character originated in a 2009 Something Awful Photoshop competition, before later being featured as a main antagonist in the Marble Hornets alternate reality YouTube web series, the videogame Slender: The Eight Pages, and its sequel Slender: The Arrival. According to most stories, he targets younger people who supposedly go into his forest looking for him. The legend also caused controversy with the Slender Man stabbing in 2014. The character is featured in various films, television series and video games and is fondly remembered as one of the most iconic Internet urban legends of the 2010s. Smile.jpg, also known as Smile Dog, is an image-based creepypasta that shows a sinister-looking dog with human teeth looking at the camera. It is commonly believed to have originated on 4chan in 2008. According to the creepypasta, the Smile.jpg image was first shared on a bulletin board system in 1992, and curses any who view it to suffer nightmares and convulsions until they "spread the word" and show others the image, spreading the curse. username:666, also written as Username:666 and Username: 666, is a grotesque video by nana825763. The video is about nana825763 trying to access a YouTube channel called "666" by refreshing it and exploring the user. Every interaction with the channel slowly causes YouTube to get distorted and bloodied, and it seems user "666" tortures nana825763 by even taking control of his computer before a hand appears and the video ends. The video later got a story adaptation by PiaNO! on Creepypasta Wiki on November 10, 2012, and got rewritten on January 14, 2014. Both versions are about a YouTube employee trying to look up the channel "666". The video, or at least user "666", is also believed to be connected to nana825763's other fictional works, such as the 2010 video Another YouTube, which shares a similarity to the Username: 666. In mid-2022, it was noted that altering the word "watch" in any YouTube URL would take the user to an edited version of the original Username: 666 video. Ted the Caver began as an Angelfire website in early 2001 that documented the adventures of a man and his friends as they explored a local cave. The story is in the format of a series of blog posts. As the explorers move further into the cave, strange hieroglyphs and winds are encountered. In a final blog post, Ted writes that he and his companions will be bringing a gun into the cave after experiencing a series of nightmares and hallucinations. The blog has not been updated since the final post. In 2013, an independent film adaptation of the story was released, called Living Dark: The Story of Ted the Caver. Zalgo is a recurring creepypasta character who is alternately interpreted as a deity, an abstract supernatural force, or a secret collective. The concept originated in 2004 on the Something Awful forums, with edits of cartoons to depict characters mutating and bleeding from their eyes while praising Zalgo. The depictions were coupled with a unique form of distorted text that became known as Zalgo text. Lost episode creepypastas "Lost episodes" are a common sub-genre of creepypastas and revolves around lost episodes of various media properties, usually television shows. These lost episodes are usually explained as having been prevented from airing, or pulled during broadcast due to controversial, mature, or unsettling aspects being shown, such as graphic violence, gore, and adult themes. The episode's disturbing content usually leads to the narrator (or a friend of theirs, a family member, or even their children) getting traumatized and having various nightmares. Candle Cove is a 2009 story by Kris Straub written in the format of an online forum thread in which people reminisce about a half-remembered children's television series from the 1970s involving a young girl named Janice – the series' protagonist – going on adventures with a cast of marionette pirates. The posters share memories of the puppets used in the series and discuss nightmares that they experienced after watching certain episodes (such as those involving a villain called the Skin-Taker, and one that had no dialogue and involved the puppets screaming relentlessly while the protagonist was reduced to hysterical crying). One person then asks their mother about the series and is told that the mother just used to tune the television to static, which the child would watch for thirty minutes. Syfy announced a television drama based on the story in 2015, adapted by Nick Antosca and Max Landis. The story makes up the first season of Channel Zero, which premiered on October 11, 2016. Dead Bart is a story by writer K. I. Simpson.[citation needed] The episode of The Simpsons features the eponymous family flying on a trip together, when Bart breaks an airplane window, which causes him to get sucked out and fall to his death. After showing a realistic version of Bart's corpse, the Simpson family is in a state of grief. One year later, Homer, Marge, and Lisa have lost enormous amounts of weight, while Maggie and their pets have disappeared. When they try to visit Bart's grave, Springfield is shown to be abandoned. The family arrives at Bart's grave where Bart's body is simply lying in front of his tombstone. The family briefly cries, before Homer cracks an unintelligible joke. In a later update, it is revealed that Homer is saying "If only we were all that lucky."[citation needed] The episode ends with a zoom-out of the cemetery, featuring the names of every single Simpsons guest star on the tombstones, with the ones that have not died yet all having the same death date.[citation needed] The full story is told from the perspective of a person who interned at Nickelodeon Studios in 2005 as an animation student. The student and some other coworkers received a tape to edit titled "Squidward's Suicide" for the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants. The staff initially assumed it was just an office prank. In the firsthand account, the video consists of Squidward preparing for a concert. After Squidward finishes playing at the concert, the crowd (including SpongeBob) jeers at Squidward, during which all have red "hyper-realistic" eyes. The next part shows Squidward forlornly sitting on a bed, while the sound of wind blowing through trees is heard in the background. The scene is spliced with quick cuts to photographs of murdered children, evidently taken by the murderer themselves; each time, the noise of the wind gets louder when cutting back to Squidward—now bearing the same red hyper-realistic eyes as the audience. Eventually, the camera zooms out to reveal Squidward holding a shotgun. A detached, deep voice commands Squidward to "do it", and he shoots himself in the head. The last few moments of the video linger on his corpse before the episode ends, leaving the staff horrified. The circulated image of the red-eyed Squidward associated with this creepypasta was referenced in the series; an altered version was included in the original uncut airing of the season 12 episode "SpongeBob in RandomLand". According to Vincent Waller (the showrunner and co-executive producer of season 12), the purpose of the reference was to make fun of "try-hard edgy fanfiction", and he has referred to Squidward's Suicide as a "ridiculous fanfiction". He further clarified that it was only intended as a reference and that the "Red Mist Squidward" character is "FAR from canon". Suicidemouse.avi is a Mickey Mouse urban legend reportedly uploaded to 4chan and later YouTube in 2009, with the video presented as being forgotten Mickey Mouse footage made by Walt Disney himself during the 1920s golden age of American animation. This video uses the rubber hose animation style. The original cartoon uploaded to 4chan was a three-minute animation loop of Mickey walking down a street with a dull, almost depressed look on his face. A later nine-minute upload included additional footage of the scenery and Mickey's face becoming distorted, with gurgling and screaming sounds. Mickey collapses to the ground, apparently dead, and Russian text is displayed, which roughly translates to: "The sights of Hell bring its viewers back in." The uploader of the longer video claimed that the footage was so disturbing that it resulted in a Disney employee committing suicide after watching it. The creepypasta was adapted into a movie on June 15, 2018, directed by Christo Lopez. The budget was over $5,000 and it was filmed in the United States.[non-primary source needed] The Rugrats Theory is a creepypasta and a theory revolving around the Nickelodeon series Rugrats and its character Angelica Pickles. In the creepypasta, it's said that many characters were just the imagination of characters seen by Angelica after they died. Similar theories exist with other children's cartoons, such as Ed, Edd n Eddy and Phineas and Ferb. These theories' concepts are either different from or the same as that. The Wyoming Incident is the case of an alleged broadcast signal intrusion that occurred in Niobrara County, Wyoming. During the interruption, viewers saw disembodied human heads performing multiple poses and emotions. The story goes that those who watched for a prolonged period presented everything from vomiting and headaches to hallucinations. These physical ailments are believed to have been caused by the high-pitched noise that played throughout most of the video. The hackers who allegedly did this were never found. On July 29, 2025, the YouTube live broadcast of the news program News 19 Horas, aired by Brazilian television network Record News, was hijacked by unknown hackers, with the Wyoming Incident video being streamed. It caused confusion and discomfort to many people watching it, many of them being unaware of the creepypasta. The network has later made the original livestream private, reuploaded the video without the interruption, and stated: Our IT team is working to determine the source of the issue, and we're also in contact with the YouTube team to understand what happened. The outage occurred only with the YouTube signal. Other broadcasts, including free-to-air and pay television, were not affected. Video game creepypastas These creepypastas commonly focus on video games containing grotesque or violent content; this content may spill onto the real world and causes the player to harm themselves or others. Many video game creepypastas involve malevolent entities such as ghosts or artificial intelligence. Created by Internet user Alex Hall (also known online as Jadusable), Ben Drowned tells a story of a college student only identified as Jadusable who buys a used copy of the video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask from an elderly man at a yard sale. Jadusable finds that the cartridge is haunted by the ghost of a boy named Ben, who drowned, as well as an entity that seems to have taken his name only identified as BEN, and an enigmatic force known as the father. After an eight-year-long hiatus, the story returned in 2020, once again in the Alternate Reality Game format, for its final arc, dubbed "Awakening", which featured adjacent plotlines about a man calling himself Jadus recounting his experiences during a societal collapse. Catastrophe Crow!, also known as Crow 64, is a creepypasta revolving around a fictional 3D platform game for the Nintendo 64 developed in Germany that was never released, whose developer, Manfred Lorenz, supposedly disappeared at sea. The story of the video game was first released when a video produced by YouTuber Adam Butcher was released, titled "What Happened to Crow 64?". Originally posted by an anonymous user on 4chan, Herobrine is a supernatural being or ghost that haunts single-player worlds in the sandbox video game Minecraft. The character is supposed to look like Steve, one of the default character skins available for new players of Minecraft, albeit with a pair of glowing white, blank eyes. Theories which explain the Herobrine's supposed origins range from his purported identity as the supposedly deceased brother of Minecraft creator Markus Persson, to an "unlucky miner" who haunts living players out of a desire for vengeance. Killswitch is a creepypasta revolving around a 1989 fictional 2D horror game of the same name by Karvina Corporation that had only 5,000 copies. It revolved around the main characters Porto and Ghast, and the game deletes itself after the player dies in the game. This legend purports that, shortly after the original Japanese release of the video games Pokémon Red and Green in 1996, there was an increase in the death rate amongst children aged 10–15. Children who had played the games reportedly screamed in terror at the sight of either of the games inserted into the Game Boy handheld console, and exhibited other erratic behavior, before committing suicide. Supposedly, the suicides were connected to the eerie background music played in the fictional location of Lavender Town in the games. In the game's canon, Lavender Town is the site of the haunted Pokémon Tower, where numerous graves of Pokémon can be found. It has been speculated that the legend was inspired by an actual event in Japan in 1997, in which hundreds of television viewers experienced photosensitive epilepsy in an episode of the Pokémon anime, titled "Dennō Senshi Porygon". NES Godzilla Creepypasta is a story written by Cosbydaf, who also produced the sprite artwork for the story. It relates the tale of a character named Zach who plays an unusual copy of the Nintendo Entertainment System game Godzilla: Monster of Monsters!. As Zach progresses through the game, simple glitches begin to turn into entirely new content and new monsters - including members of Toho's monsters that never appeared in the game and monsters from entries in the Godzilla franchise that were released after Monster of Monsters!, and wholly-original creatures unrelated to either of the prior two categories - and eventually, a malevolent, supernatural being by the name of Red reveals himself. As the mystery behind the nature of Red unravels, it is revealed that the demon has closer ties to Zach than he ever could have expected. The story concludes with Zach - having defeated Red during the final battle - selling the game on eBay, unable to bring himself to keep or destroy the mysterious cartridge. The story is often praised for its extensive use of custom-made screenshots, depicting thousands of sprites created by the story's author. A fangame based on the story is being developed. Petscop is a web series released on YouTube which purports to be a Let's Play of a "lost and unfinished" 1997 PlayStation video game of the same name. In the game, the player character must capture strange creatures known as "pets" by solving puzzles. However, after the narrator of the series enters a code on a note attached to the copy of the game he received, he can enter a strange, dark, and hidden section of the game known as the Newmaker Plane and the depths below it. Although the puzzles continue, the game's tone shifts dramatically, and numerous references to child abuse appear; Newmaker appears to refer to the real-life case of Candace Newmaker, who was murdered during rebirthing therapy. An urban legend claims that in 1981, an arcade cabinet called Polybius caused nightmares and hallucinations in players, leading at least one person to suicide. Several people supposedly became anti-gaming activists, after playing Polybius. One of the oldest urban legends regarding video games, Polybius has entered popular culture, and numerous fangames exist as attempts to recreate the game from numerous accounts of its nature. Sonic.exe is a 2011 creepypasta created by JC-the-Hyena. The original story follows a teenager named Tom Miller, who receives a CD from his friend Kyle Scott and a note telling him to destroy it. Finding Kyle's warning to be a joke, Tom decides to play it, finding it to be a haunted version of the 1991 game Sonic the Hedgehog. The haunted version of the game contains disturbing sound effects from other video games, as well as an eldritch entity known as the titular Sonic.exe or just X, who takes on a form almost identical to Sonic, with bloodstained, blackened sclera and glowing red pupils. In each of the four levels, Tom plays as Tails for the first two, and the other two as Knuckles and Doctor Eggman respectively, only for them to be killed and enslaved by X at the end of them. After all the characters are killed, a "hyper-realistic" image of the character appears with the caption "I AM GOD". Hearing a voice say, "Try to keep this interesting for me, Tom.", Tom turns around, only to see a stuffed Sonic plushie crying blood on his bed, his fate unknown. The story was posted on the Creepypasta Wiki in 2011, and was removed in January 2014 due to complaints of its poor quality when compared to other gaming creepypastas, despite it being somewhat influential. The growing backlash towards the story led JC-the-Hyena to publish a protracted diatribe about his grievances with the Creepypasta Wiki's decision, which only fueled further criticism. Toonstruck 2 is a story revolving around the 1996 video game Toonstruck, a real-life sequel to which was developed but not released due to the commercial flop of the first game. The protagonist of the story, an adventure game geek named Dave, buys a copy of the unreleased sequel from a creepy man in a black raincoat; as he plays Toonstruck 2, its atmosphere becomes increasingly sinister, and the game begins to change the real world around him (the original Toonstruck was about a cartoon animator transported to the toon world through TV). The story alleges that Toonstruck 2 was based on art from the sketchbook of a mentally ill cartoon animator who murdered his boss, bought by one of Virgin Interactive Entertainment's executives at a murderabilia auction, and the real reason for its cancellation was that its contents were too shocking. SVG's Christopher Gates wrote: "The incomplete storyline has proved to be fertile ground for fans, who seem more than happy to fill in the blanks... If Toonstruck had been finished, maybe it would've faded away. But it wasn't, and the mystery has kept Toonstruck fans engaged for over 20 years—and counting." See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_bridge] | [TOKENS: 182] |
Contents Bikini bridge A bikini bridge is defined as "when bikini bottoms are suspended between the two hip bones, causing a space between the bikini and the lower abdomen". The phrase originated in the United States on January 5, 2014, coined by users on the /b/ board on the imageboard 4chan as a parody of popular thinspiration memes. According to a posting on the website, users intended to spread content across social media regarding bikini bridges. It was reported on by U.S. television program Today on January 7. Several commentators critiqued the posts for displaying insensitivity or being "dangerous" for women with an eating disorder. Bikini bridges have been described as "fake", and compared to the Chinese trends "Collarbone Challenge", and the "A4 Challenge". References This culture-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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