Monday, 23 February 2015

It's Raining . . . Frogs

 
I figured it was time to take a break from evil dolls, and look at other horrors that could befall humanity. The following is adapted from a previous post on Behind the Walls of Nightmare:

It may rain cats and dogs only metaphorically, but there have been numerous documented cases of frog and fish rainfall. Cases of such rainfalls, often associated in the popular mind with Biblical curses, have been reported frequently in modern times.

 Here are some examples:

  • In 1977, thousands of frogs fell from the sky in Brignoles, France.
  • On June 7, 2005, thousands of frogs rained on Odzaci, a small town in northwestern Serbia.
  • At the end of February 2010, residents of Lajamanu, a small Australian town, saw hundreds of spangled perch fall from the sky.
  • The United Kingdom is especially prone to falling frogs, having experienced a number of episodes, the most recent being in Bromley, England.

Many scientists believe that tornadic waterspouts—tornadoes that form over land and travel over water—may be responsible for frog and fish rainfalls. Other scientists theorize that any unusually powerful updraft could lift small organisms or organic material into the sky during a storm. (An updraft is a wind current caused by warm air from high pressure areas near the earth rising into cooler, low-pressure areas in the atmosphere.)

Of course, if you're Stephen King, the frogs have teeth and appear in an annual rainfall to prey upon their skeptics... (See his short story “Rainy Season” in Nightmares and Dreamscapes.)

If you're interested in taking a look at frog and fish rainfall, there are numerous YouTube videos that you can google on this subject.

Monday, 16 February 2015

Annabelle the Doll

Annabelle in the Warren's Occult Museum in Connecticut

If you've watched The Conjuring and its spinoff/prequel Annabelle, you've heard of Annabelle the Doll.

Annabelle is a rag doll rather than the porcelain doll depicted in the two movies. It originally belonged to a nursing student named Donna--a gift from her mother. The doll was reputed to move about in her apartment and to change its poses, as well as leaving cryptic notes saying HELP on pieces of parchment.

When Donna came home to her apartment one day and found drops of blood on the doll's hand, she called upon the services of a psychic. The medium advised Donna that the doll was haunted by the spirit of a dead child named Annabelle Higgins (hence the name given to the doll).

When the doll later became violent towards her roommate's boyfriend Lou, Donna contacted demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren. They advised her that the doll was not inhabited by the spirit of Annabelle Higgins, but was in fact possessed by a devil. At Donna's request, they removed it from her apartment.

The doll now resides in an occult museum owned by the Warrens. According to Ed Warren, Annabelle was responsible for the death of a young man who visited the museum and taunted the doll, daring it to do its worst to him. The man died three hours later in a motorcycle crash.

There's lot of reading/viewing material on Annabelle, including videotaped reenactments of its history on YouTube.

To learn more of the doll's story, please click here and here. And you can also contact the Warren's Occult Museum through Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Warrens-Occult-Museum/126070474135029.

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Monday, 9 February 2015

Robert the Haunted Doll

I had heard of Chucky, the evil doll of the Child's Play franchise, but until I was doing research for my second supernatural novel, I wasn't aware that Robert the Doll was in fact the inspiration for Chucky.

Robert is a hand-crafted doll made around the turn of the 20th century and named for Robert Eugene Otto, to whom the doll belonged until his death in 1974. As a child, Otto invested the doll with a human identity, often talked to him, and blamed the doll when he was accused of misbehavior. According to Otto's parents, the doll talked back to their son, giggled, and was capable of movement. After Otto's death, the doll remained in the house, and the new owner took Robert with her when she moved six years later. In 1994 she donated the doll to the Fort East Martello Museum in Key West, Florida, saying that the doll was haunted. (She too had observed the doll's ability to move from room to room.)

(Source: http://www.kwahs.org/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/robert-the-doll/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_%28doll%29.)

Robert the Doll now has his own website at http://www.robertthedoll.org/, Twitter account at https://twitter.com/Robertthedoll, and Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/robert.thedoll.5. You can also send him an e-mail at robert@robertthedoll.org.

And if you'd like your own Robert doll, you can buy one from the Key West museum where Robert currently resides.

Next week's post ... Annabelle the Doll


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robert@robertthedoll.org
robert@robertthedoll.org


Robert Eugene Otto
Robert Eugene Otto
Robert Eugene Otto

Monday, 2 February 2015

Afterlife: The Series

       
If you're a fan of Andrew Lincoln (Rick in The Walking Dead), you might also like to check out Afterlife, a psychological and supernatural British TV drama  in which he plays a leading role. The series is superbly acted, but despite its critical and popular acclaim, it was unfortunately not renewed past its second season.
 
Aterlife is the story of a university professor, Dr. Robert Bridge (played by Lincoln), who has lost his young son. His son's death has led to his divorce and torn a seemingly irreparable hole in his life. Bridge is a skeptic who views psychics as unscrupulous fakes that give false hope to the living while draining their financial resources. Then he comes up against what appears to be the genuine article--Alison Mundy, brilliantly played by Lesley Sharp--who would like nothing more than to be freed from her ability to see and communicate with the spirits of the dead, including Bridge's son.


Of course, the first thing you need to adjust to in watching Afterlife is Andrew Lincoln's native British accent, which one tends to forget because of how well he performs his American drawl in The Walking Dead.

Afterlife is available through Amazon.