Kansas Crimson

japhy wrote: ↑Thu Oct 24, 2024 1:25 pm I think ghosts are a form of energy we just don't understand or have a scientific way to explain/measure at this point in time. They can push on a floor and make it creak, they can throw a book in response to a comment, they can open doors. It is more than a visual anomaly.

Long ago I decided it's a rabbit hole I had no interest in going down. I don't look for them, they seem to seek me out.

I went full tilt into the study for a while in high school. People who are empaths are predisposed to reading the emotions and feelings of those around them. Having a gentle and caring attitude is a magnet. I notice things; I imagine TDub and Japh are the same way. When I was at KU I worked to guard the Baker campus, and I saw and heard things all the time. Your paycheck both depended on noticing sound and anomalies, and being brave enough to power through unexplainable things. Some buildings I locked early in the shift and just did a cursory check later. The one I had to walk through every couple of hours was the newest and creepiest. I felt like the spirit there loved to mess with me. So I rushed through, running to the key so I could leave as quickly as possible. One particularly creepy night there was a full lunar eclipse as I hit that building, and the hair started raising on my neck. So, I just checked the doors and short-cut hitting the shift key on the back wall of the stage by opening the exit there. As I opened the door, the key was levitating and waiting for me--jutting out to the back door. I took it and turned the old round clock. I said "Thanks!," shut the door, and ran back to the old pump house where we had our office, too shook to complete the rounds. I eventually got myself together. There had been someone who lived amongst and under the campus, leaving "gifts" to the faculty in the 60s-70s as I understood it. As hauntings go, this was more Japh than Hell House. I had an aunt who was out and out a medium, running a Ouija Board by herself. The most interesting session was the WATCH THE FLAME annotating sequence sequence where the candle jetted up to the ceiling three feet for a second after we had finished spelling it out. The Ouija board had a tendency towards darkness and often would hook folks into playing it with "family" spirits--who were obviously not after taking weird dark threatening turns (predicting family deaths, etc. and basically menacing the household with threatening behavior exploiting weaknesses). Leave the damned thing alone. Unless you are so unperceptive and unbelieving of anything it can't reach through your filters. I always laugh when I see it in the children's game sections of stores.

These things exist at the edge of our remote understanding--but there is some fringe physics that would explain it if we could get around some of the Amazing Randy science skeptics. (I think the funniest thing in the world would be the ghost of the Amazing Randy trying in vain to get through to a medium). Unfortunately so many of these ghost hunter shows are fraudulent farces. People are innately interested in this, and so are vulnerable to Trump types playing "let's pretend."

If you ever come out to the Empire for Solstice I will give you a tour of the haunted places if you want.

There is an "alien vortex" nearby but we aren't really convinced on that one.

The "ghost lights" on Mt Blanca are cool but we have only seen them once and we stare at that mountain a lot.

Would love it.

Watched two horror movies last night.

First was Halloween…one of the sequels, cuz Jamie Lee Curtis was grandma age now. Good for some jump scares and campy gross out gore scenes, but otherwise pretty mindless.

Top highlight: some chick looking out the window, unbeknownst to Michael Myers already in the house sneaking up behind her, when he grabs her by the hair and stabs her thru the back of the neck.

Next one was one I hadn’t watched since it scared the piss out of me at like age 14 when it came out: The Blair Witch Project. Putting the discussion here cuz I’m pretty sure the lost-and-found paranormal footage makes for more entertaining (or at least more horrific) horror/mystery/suspense than the guy in a mask chasing everyone around sorta format.

It still has some horror movie archetypes - oh hey a scary old house, so let’s go in the basement! - but the fact you never actually see the Blair witch, I think, does more with less. And just watching 3 kids completely loose their minds is so distressing, but hey, it’s a horror movie.

I guess much of it was improvised, and makes it feel like you really are just watching some dumb kids’ amateur video footage. And it was done on a shoestring budget too.

Top highlight: the classic scene when she’s sobbing into the camera and says something like, “I’m too scared to close my eyes, but too scared to open my eyes too.”

The scariest scene in Blair Witch was where the camera enters the basement room and dude is standing in the corner like a spooky time-out!

Yeah, that’s pretty much (spoiler alert!) the ending.

It’s a nod to one of the local townsfolk interviews at the beginning when they say the witch/the serial killer possessed by the witch would make one kid wait looking at the wall while he murdered the other.

There’s also a fun fan theory that the two dudes blamed the chick for getting them lost so they conspired against her to kill her. And/or cuz of some paranormal force that turns everyone against the other, more so than the antagonist being one particular witch. I dunno how well that holds, but hey, it’s just a fan theory.

If I was lost in the woods I think I’d just follow the creek one direction until it led me somewhere else. I dunno if they address that specifically, but the idea is the paranormal force gets them all turned around so they’re just running in circles out there.

If weird shit was going on outside the tent in the dark, I dunno if I’d get out to go investigate. But again, maybe the inference is the paranormal forces are making them make dumb decisions.

I’ve been good and freaked out by the sound of a stick breaking in the woods while camping, and gotta cop the area with a light to even get out to take a leak at night. That’s mostly just to check for wild animals. But if something started shaking the tent, or if there’s little kid giggling sounds in the middle of the wilderness at night, oh man, I’m getting goosebumps just typing it.

I guess it prompted more found-footage sorts of horror movie formats. One is the obviously named Paranormal Activity. I haven’t seen that one all the way thru, just a few minutes here and there of weird shit happening on nanny cams at night.

BiggDick wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2024 2:15 pm Yeah, that’s pretty much (spoiler alert!) the ending.

It’s a nod to one of the local townsfolk interviews at the beginning when they say the witch/the serial killer possessed by the witch would make one kid wait looking at the wall while he murdered the other.

There’s also a fun fan theory that the two dudes blamed the chick for getting them lost so they conspired against her to kill her. And/or cuz of some paranormal force that turns everyone against the other, more so than the antagonist being one particular witch. I dunno how well that holds, but hey, it’s just a fan theory.

If I was lost in the woods I think I’d just follow the creek one direction until it led me somewhere else. I dunno if they address that specifically, but the idea is the paranormal force gets them all turned around so they’re just running in circles out there.

If weird shit was going on outside the tent in the dark, I dunno if I’d get out to go investigate. But again, maybe the inference is the paranormal forces are making them make dumb decisions.

I’ve been good and freaked out by the sound of a stick breaking in the woods while camping, and gotta cop the area with a light to even get out to take a leak at night. That’s mostly just to check for wild animals. But if something started shaking the tent, or if there’s little kid giggling sounds in the middle of the wilderness at night, oh man, I’m getting goosebumps just typing it.

I guess it prompted more found-footage sorts of horror movie formats. One is the obviously named Paranormal Activity. I haven’t seen that one all the way thru, just a few minutes here and there of weird shit happening on nanny cams at night.

Dyatlov Pass

oh yeah!

Dyatlov Pass...

sounds like they've pretty much determined it was a slab avalanche

either that or, in the spirit of this thread, a radioactive yeti...