Glue This!

I hate Super Glue. I really do. It’s made by some sadistic folks who have nothing better to do than dream up ways for dorks like me to permanently stick things where they are not supposed to be stuck.

First they tell you to stick the pin in the opening, knowing full well the moment you do the stuff it going to spurt out and you can’t frickin’ wipe it up because by the time you get a paper towel the vial is already stuck to your fingers. Yeah, nail polish remover. Being a guy I just happen to have that on my shelf, right next to the strawberry body wash and defoliant. Uh-huh. So you walk around with a little plastic tube stuck to your hand until you can get to the store and actually buy the polish remover—unless you aren’t particularly partial to the patch of skin it’s glued to or into that sort of pain…

Of course, what you really want to glue…won’t stay glued. The tube is hard so getting out just one little drop is as likely as a seagull not pooping on your car hood to minute after you drive out the carwash. You try to hold the piece of whatever you’re gluing in place, praying you didn’t get the glue on your finger because though the two sides of the object surely didn’t take you just know your finger did, and explaining to everybody why you have half a sex toy stuck to your hand, well…need I go into that?

And God, if you’re a guy especially, do NOT go to the bathroom after trying to use this stuff. There are just some things you cannot explain and that your hand is in your pants all the time is one of them…

More MIB Weirdery

As I mentioned in my exploration of my uncle’s “experience” with those enigmatic Men in Black, a related incident occurred with my cousin and his second wife a few days later. The alleged happening occurred on September 24th, 1976, and at face value seems even more incredible than that of my uncle’s, Dr. Herbert Hopkins, encounter.

My cousin’s name was John, his wife’s name Maureen (we called her Moo for short, but I won’t go into the reason…hey, at least she didn’t have three of ‘em like another relative I know…) and they lived on an apartment on the property. The apartment was on the second floor, over the garage, about a hundred yards from the main house, separated only by a large wide driveway. John was the older of two boys, Herb, Jr. being the youngest and much less fantasy prone. He and I got along pretty well and he was always starting this band or that. He was a talented bass guitar player. Maureen was talented at things the adults didn’t really speak of around us kids.

Anyway, the story goes something like this: On that fateful night of the 24th, Maureen received a mysterious phone call from a chap who claimed to know John. This man asked if he could visit for a while. John went to a local fast-food place to pick them up, bringing both the man and his woman companion back to the apartment. John did not recognize either. (Ok, stop here. Anyone else think it odd that this fellow supposedly knew John and yet John didn’t recognize him and brought him back home anyway? I’ll explain the reason a bit later.)

Both visitors appeared in their mid-thirties and wore odd, old-fashioned clothes (John never told me how old-fashioned, which decade the clothing came from. I don’t think he really thought it through that far.) The woman was a bit peculiar, with breasts set very low and something wrong with the way her legs joined at the hips. Both strangers walked with short steps while leaning forward, as if afraid to fall.

John and Maureen, being the hosts they were, gave each stranger a Coke, though the visitors never took a sip. They sat awkwardly on a sofa and the man began asking very detailed personal questions (ok, if there are children reading this, go get popcorn and a drink and come back in a few paragraphs.) Some of the questions were mundane: what did they watch on TV? Read? What did they talk about? But all the while the man was, er, fondling his female friend. The man then asked if that was ok and if he was “doing it right”.

Uh-huh.

When John left the room for a moment, the man asked Maureen to sit next to him and asked her “how she was made”. And whether she had nude photos of herself. You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Well, as a kid I discovered a curious missing time element in the story and no one would tell me why. I think I’ve got it all figured out by now.

At any rate, the woman announced a bit later she wanted to scram, but when the man stood he made no move to leave. He stood between the woman and the door and it appeared that the only way she could leave was by walking in a straight line to that door. So she asked my cousin to “please move him (her companion). I can’t move him myself.” Then suddenly the man left, followed by miss straight-liner, walking in a perfect line, without even a goodbye.

There you have it. What seemed kinda creepy to a kid now seems…well, no so much. In fact, it is so full gaps and silliness you have to wonder why some of the legitimate journals on paranormal research would even bother to treat it with any validity.
The truth is again pretty obvious and simple. But unfortunately mixed with family sadness. Remember the part I mentioned about John not recognizing the couple but bringing them home anyway? At the time, we kids weren’t privy to what went on there, but later John told me. John and Maureen were swingers (is that term even still used?) It was fairly common for other couples to be coming and going about that place. As I kid I thought, wow, they sure have a lot of, um, “close” friends. Yep, close. Very close. So that they might have brought home an alien or two…not such a big surprise.

Anyhoooo…John was unfortunately addicted to a number of narcotics and, like his father, alcohol. Maureen was into recreational drugs and booze as well…and a particularly friendly gal. Both imagined all sorts of things on a nightly basis. And did all sorts of things that are unmentionable here.

John was basically a good guy, but in desperate need of affirmation and attention. Especially from his father. Unfortunately he never got it. And things happened past that point that get rather murky. They all up and moved a thousand miles way from Maine to Florida. A short time later I got a call from John, asking to come stay with us for a few days so he and his mom could come back to visit the old beach ‘hood. He had terminal liver damage from all the drugs, which he had finally kicked. We expected him and his mom the next week.

And never heard from him again. Maureen—in a story I don’t really know all the reasons for—shot and killed him in their backyard. The last I knew, she was still in jail, but that was quite a while back.

It’s funny the way life goes sometimes, isn’t it? How the outrageous can in a heartbeat turn to the tragic. Well, at least in my family the mysterious Men in Black can be put to rest, if not the memory of my cousin.

Next time, maybe I’ll a touch on the psychic church and aunt with three ta-tas…

Naked Book Selling

The other day I was having a peculiar conversation with a writer friend about book promotion. Promotion—unless you’re a Big Name or can sleep with your marketing rep and an editor or two—mostly gets left to the author nowadays. So writer friend, who’s mind is even more naughty as mine is, says, ok, how ‘bout this: sex sells.

Um, yeah, ok, but since I ain’t Brad Pitt that’s not an option.

Writer Friend: Maybe implants?

Me says: Nah, I’d just stay in my room playin’ with ‘em all day and get no work done. Or practice makin’ copies of them on the photocopier machine that way writer friend does. (these don’t FAX well, incidentally…)

Writer Friend: Well, what other assets do you have?

Me: I think I’m sittin’ on ‘em.

Writer Friend: Ok, you gotta do it, then!

Me: Do what?

Writer Friend: Pose naked!

Me: Um, we’ve got 10 months till Halloween. One scare a year is enough.

Writer Friend: No, you can maybe photocopy your butt and use it on flyers. Use the slogan, Don’t Let This Book Slip Through the Cracks!

Me: Groan? Aren’t there laws against that kind of thing?

Writer Friend: The fines can’t be that heavy. Think of the publicity you’d get.

Me: Well, maybe I should just have my book covers tattooed on my bum, then…

Writer Friend: That’s it! And wear a thong!

Eek. Conversation over before she decided to fetch the magic markers and start drawing on my cheeks.

But I’m wondering now if maybe she wasn’t on to something? This might be my best angle.

The Truth About a Man in Black

I got a phone call the other day, from an interviewer for an Internet show dealing with unusual occurrences and the supernatural. The person I spoke with was interested in a member of my family who’d passed away a couple years back and a certain experience that relative had reported. I hadn’t thought about the story in ages, but it was an interesting conversation and dispelled something that probably had gone on for too long.

My uncle’s name was Dr. Herbert Hopkins. Most of you will say “huh?” and rightly so. A few of you, who are, like me, interested in studying legitimate unusual phenomena may recognize the name, and a handful really into investigating strange occurrences may know exactly who I am talking about. Those who don’t, stayed tuned and I’ll fill you in.

First, a bit of background in a couple areas, on my uncle himself, and on the peculiar phenomena known as the Men in Black (no, not the movie with Will Smith or Johnny Cash clones with bad attitudes).

My uncle was well-known locally and somewhat nationally for a couple reasons. He was a renowned allergist and made WHO’S WHO for his pioneering work with MS. He had a genius level IQ, and knew it, and as is the case sometimes with folks like that (nothing I’ll personally ever have to worry about) had trouble relating to people he thought beneath him in intellectual ability (though conversely he constantly craved an audience, no matter what level). He was often very cold and distant, clinical, the exact opposite of my aunt, who was a lovely, caring woman, if easily deluded. I spent nearly an entire summer living with them while my mother was going through a number of operations, and for the most part I loved every minute of it. Some of my best memories are of the holiday times we spent there, at least with my aunt and cousins, because relating to Uncle Herb was difficult on the best of days (God forbid you did something stupid because you would be belittled for it, and at times I was stupidity-prone). He was vehement in his opinions, strident in expressing them, and unforgiving of those who dared to disagree. And if he caught you, you were in for literally hours of enduring those opinions. Then usually a neck brace from nodding the whole time (if you knew what was good for you). But he could build an electronic organ from scratch, damn near cure the common cold sometimes and his house was a child’s wonderland of passages and an entire wall of speakers (and believe me once those were fired up the whole house shuddered with sound.) He was brilliant and the world was better for him. But sometimes that brilliance has its price, or takes its toll.

He also, for a time in the 1970s, ran a psychic “church”. I have some stories about that, but I’ll save those for another day.

Men in Black. Those enigmatic dudes dressed in, um, black, who show up after a UFO encounter to give some poor soul a bucket load of grief. Them of pasty faces, no lips and all the warmth of Martha Stewart.

And unfortunately the second thing my uncle is known for.

The story originally appeared in the tabloid rag The Star (though I clearly recall the night he first told it. I had just entered high school and my grandparents were up from Florida. They were the ones who my aunt was out with that fateful night and who brought the story back to me.) It was later picked up, with minor variations (or embellishments) in Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown, the excellent encyclopedia set Mysteries of Mind, Space & Time and Jenny Randles’ book, The Truth Behind the Men in Black, among others.

The story goes like this: On a balmy September night in 1976 here in Old Orchard Beach, Dr. Herbert Hopkins, then 58, was home alone (he rarely went anywhere at that point) when he got a mysterious phone call from somebody purporting to be from the New Jersey UFO Research Organization, asking to stop by and discuss a recent case my uncle had been working on. My uncle was a fairly well-known hypnotherapist who had been assisting with the David Stephens abduction case (somewhat famous for the Oxford, Maine, sighting and abduction incident. Stephens and a friend had encountered floating lights on a night drive, experienced hallucinogenic after-effects and missing time.) This person from the NJ-UFO-RO wanted to discuss the case, so my uncle agreed. No sooner did he hang up and switch on the living room light (there were three doors to this place, one from the street, two from the side, one of those entering the shed leading to the kitchen and the other leading directly into the living room. A fourth door actually lay between those, leading to the underground doctor’s office and waiting room. So why the Man in Black (MIB) picked the living room instead of the front door is unknown.) than did this MIB appear at the door. The man had said he was calling from a phone booth, but the distance to the closest booth was many blocks away. (In one version I personally got from my uncle they had a big black car. The story grew quite a bit over time.)

The man had a bald head, drawn-on lips (he wore some sort of lipstick that rubbed off on his glove) and the usual deadpan, monotoned attitude associated with MIBs. I won’t go too deep into the actual story because you can read about it in numerous places, but in a nutshell, this MIB made a coin dematerialize to another “plane”, claimed to have done the same to the heart of another abductee nearby (he was referring to Barney Hill, whose heart, is indeed still intact) and threatened to do the same to my uncle if he did not erase all the tapes from the hypnotic session interviews of David Stephens (anyone wonder why a being who can makes hearts and coins vanish didn’t just simply make the tapes vanish? Tapes that were already public knowledge, incidentally, so why bother?)

At the end of the meeting the MIB’s voice slowed like a battery running down and he staggered away. Which is a pretty intimidating thing to do when you are threatening someone…

There is a related incident a bit later with my uncle’s oldest son and wife (who lived in an apartment on the property), but I will leave that one alone for now. Suffice to say, take it with a huge grain of salt. (As an aside, my cousin was later murdered by that very same wife, so that probably tells you something of the family dynamics there.)

Anyway, like I said, the whole thing was sold to the Star and propagated throughout many legitimate journals devoted to psychic and unusual phenomena investigation. Mostly based on a Dr.’s reputation, despite the obvious inconsistencies of the tale and inherent 50s paranoia overtones (which was exactly where the tale came from. My uncle was an avid reader of 50s horror and sci fi comics, paperbacks and old pulps and minimal research will turn up the parallels.)

My uncle was, unfortunately, a fantasy-prone individual, craved the center of attention and limelight and on a base level he sometimes just made things up—no matter how hyperbolic—to top everybody else. As brilliant as he was in many areas, however, he was unskilled at fiction.

And for much of the ‘70s and 80s, he was an alcoholic. Every night was spent alone with a magnum of wine (he made his own wine, too, in a still in the basement). He would stumble up the stairs at about 5am, tripping over the “invisible dog”. How did I know about the invisible dog? Well, a handful of times when I was sleeping over I would be awake and hear that tripping and the inevitable curse, “goddamn dog!” The real dog, incidentally, was next to me on the bed, staring out at the hall, wondering what the hell the thud had been.

The bottom line for this particular Man in Black tale is unfortunately pretty mundane. This mysterious being in black, inspired by cheap fiction and alcohol, probably less of malicious intent and more from some sad need for attention, was, alas, a simple lie, one that needs to be corrected for those into serious research in this area.

And y’all thought your relatives were weird?

Authors and Steriods...Naming Names?

All this talk lately of baseball players being named for the use of steroids and Human Growth Hormone (HGH) has got me to thinkin’. I know, that doesn’t happen very often or come naturally, but bear with me.

It’s got me to thinkin’ about that other well-known group of office athletes through whom the use of such endurance- and strength-enhancing substances have run rampant. That’s right: authors. Especially horror authors. And here you thought we were all simply alcoholics with shotgun fetishes…

But I think it’s time to name names.

Yes, I know it’s sad, but you know how it starts. A sniff of White Out here, a case of Jolt there. Pretty soon you’re goin’ for the real juice because you need just another thousand words by midnight or a few more pages by Tuesday. Really, it won’t hurt you if you take just a teensy bit, right? Well, wrong, buster and bustettes. Before you know it you’ve shaved your head and sitting at your ‘puter without your underwear.

Oh, spare me the “my fingers ached real bad” or “I just wanted a little extra push for that deadline and never realized I’d grow a third testicle” routine. I’ve heard it all. And it’s time to stop and type naturally. Or hire a large-chested blonde to….Oh, whoops, sorry, wrong article…

It’s time to get it all out into the open. If you won’t help yourselves, well, someone will have to take away your keyboards and force you to scribble stories in crayon until you’re over the withdrawal. It’s for your own good all you Big Names on the Bestseller List. So without further ado, here’s the list of—

What? Whatta you mean someone’s at the door? HOW MANY??? They’ve got what? Wearing Stephen King masks, you say? Um, hold on…

List? What list? There never was any stinkin’ list. Really. I mean it. Now go away. Forget what you’ve just read. You know how we writers make stuff up. It was all a dream. Bobby Ewing in the shower.

Uh, gotta go. Quick. Three testicles will probably come in handy for something anyway…

Do You Believe in Ghosts?

I have never met a real live ghost. Or real dead ghost, as the case might be. I would really like to. I know others who say they have seen or even talked to ghosts. Me, well, there was that one guy at the DMV…um, hold on, that might have been a zombie, not a ghost.

I have always been interested in ghost-hunting and things that go bump in the night. I suppose I wouldn’t write ghost stories if I weren’t. I can thank Scooby Doo and Dark Shadows for that. (The scariest thing I remember as a child was seeing the ghost of Quentin Collins roaming the halls of Collinwood—ok, that was the second scariest thing because the guy without a head grabbing young women in the woods comes in first, or third if you count a date I had with this girl—we’ll call her Lizzie ‘cause she had this thing about sharp objects—in high school who part-timed at K-Mart. Who knew Blue Light Special had anything to do with auto-erotica and the color your face turned after five minutes alone with this girl? FYI: even plastic handcuffs can be pretty had to break. Um, so I’ve heard.

Anyway…

I had a relative who claimed to see and talk to ghosts. Unfortunately 99.9 percent of them came out of the magnum bottle of wine he polished off each night. There was an invisible dog involved with that, too. Trust me on that one.

Something odd did happen to me as a child (ok, ok, don’t even go there!) It was about a year after my grandmother died, Christmas Eve. Despite all the holiday cheer, I went to bed feeling depressed, something that never happened to me. It wasn’t long after I had turned off all the lights—except the night light—and yeah, yeah, even horror writers can be afraid of the dark as a kid—when I heard a heavy wheezing breathing type thing, considerably like the sound my grandmother was making for a time before she passed away. She was very attached to me, so it was the first thing I thought of upon hearing that sound—check that, second thing, because running was the first thing. Just because horror writers like writing about creepy things doesn’t mean we want to experience most of them personally. I wasn’t even close to falling asleep and might have thought I was imagining it if not for the fact my Dachshund, Schnapsie, who slept with me started acting peculiar. By peculiar I mean staring off at something I couldn’t see and whining. At that point, being the brave child I was, I bolted, dog and all (I loved that dog and even if I was a scaredy-cat I had a certain amount of loyalty!)

About six months later, on a summer night, I experienced the same thing, along with the dog, for the last time. Was my grandmother trying to reach me? I don’t know and could never make myself accept that explanation. Which is why I enjoy ghost-hunting and want a definitive experience of my own.

Of course, I want my ghost to look like Jessica Alba, not some guy with a hanging eyeball and really bad corpse breath. But let’s not go back to the auto-erotica thing…
How ‘bout y’all? Anybody had a definitive experience with a ghost? Or want to have one?

America's (Maybe the World's) Greatest Threat?

This week’s subject is a bit more on the serious side. It’s about something that has been bugging me for a while now. I’m pretty sure it’s a conspiracy of some sort, though of what I haven’t exactly figured out. Yet. But I will.

Because “they”—let’s call they “they” for the moment—are insidiously working their way throughout American society. They are entering your houses and places of employment. You’ll find them in your bedroom, just…well, just lying there looking all harmless and needed. But they’re evil. At least, I’m pretty sure they’re evil. And probably a government plot of some kind. I mean, isn’t the government always responsible for that sort of thing?

What are these evil entities?

I call them glue boogers.

Oh, you know what they are. They come in your magazines and flyers, innocently holding a resubscription notice to your favorite periodical or keeping poor adolescent boys and perv mail workers from pawing through your Victoria’s Secret catalogs. Those rubbery, semi-sticky worms of, well, something, something probably chemical and just a hair’s breadth away from springing to life and taking over the world.

Beware, I tell you. Those glue boogers are up to no good. Notice how once they grab on you can’t shake them off your fingers. Notice how they never seem to go all the way into the trash can…no, they hang about the edge, just lurking, waiting to grab an unsuspecting passerby and insidiously stick to their jeans or flannel shirt.

Damn them.

Oh, they do have one productive use. They are great for freaking out just about any seven-year-old when you pretend to pull them out of your nose. Stretch ‘em long, I say. Really give the tot a fright.

Unless, of course, it’s one of those kids who already derives hours of pleasure from excavating the depths of their own noses and either smearing the results under a chair or saving Mom the trouble of mid-afternoon snack.

Hmm, maybe I should have called this week’s piece Green Bits…nah.