Odd Musical Instrument: Theramin

The Theremin is one of the earliest electronic instruments, and is played without ever physically touching it.

Outfitted with two antennas, the primary operator is the electrostatic coupling between the player and the instrument’s electrodes. When the hands of the player enter the electrostatic field, changes in pitch and volume occur. The left side controls the volume, and the right controls the pitch. It was nvented in the 1920’s by Lev Termen.

The Theremin’s sound enjoyed cult status in many sci-fi movies of the 1950’s, being used for spooky sounding effects, but virtuoso’s like Clara Rockmore refused to play in any those soundtracks, because she played the Theremin as a “serious classical instrument” and felt it demeaned the instrument.

The Theremin is still used today in movies, and by a number of musicians, and has undergone a new resurgence, used by bands from Led Zeppelin to Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, and also played in more traditional styles.

Please look at Oddmusic, for more truly weird and wonderful musical oddities.

Vanished: Freaks

In the distant past, before American Idol fed our appetites for freakiness, sideshows at the circus featured all manner of oddities, from medical maladies, and malformations, to weird showmanship. Political correctness, changing entertainment options, and medical advances, have made sideshows a thing of the past. Well, the kind you probably picture are thing of the past. The new side-show is more about performance. Sword swallowing, fire eating, that sort of thing.

Gibsonton, Fla. was once the winter home of the circus freaks. No more. The last of the freaks are gone. (Check out the section at the above link that deals with the murder of “lobster boy.” )

The movie, “Freaks” immortalized for the cult-film crowd a few of these intrepid performers. The movie’s freakiest casting, ironically, isn’t freaks, however. It’s the children who are playing adult dwarfs.

Nazca Civilization a Victim of Ecological Degradation?

Remember the Nazca? You know, that ancient civilization of Peru that made the giant drawings, recognizable only from high above that sparked theories of alien contact? Those drawings are still the site of pilgrimages by spiritual seekers today. Well, scientists now believe that the mysterious Nazca people disappeared as a result of a self-wrought ecological disaster brought on by massive deforestation of their desert plains. Livescience has the goods.

Baudelaire: The Ghost

 

OFTLY as brown-eyed Angels rove

I will return to thy alcove,

And glide upon the night to thee,

Treading the shadows silently.

And I will give to thee, my own,

Kisses as icy as the moon,

And the caresses of a snake

Cold gliding in the thorny brake.

And when returns the livid morn

Thou shalt find all my place forlorn

And chilly, till the falling night.

Others would rule by tenderness

Over thy life and youthfulness,

But I would conquer thee by fright!

 

 

Black-Eyed Beings Stalking People? Read “Real Vampires”

From an article at rense.com about a strange occurrence that is, apparently, becoming more and more commonly reported: Black-eyed beings, often appearing to be kids, who approach people and request entrance into their homes, cars, etc. We, at the Black Lodge, recently learned of this reading Brad Steiger’s latest book: “Real Vampires, Night Stalkers and Creatures from the Darkside.” It’s a wonderful source for some really creepy Halloween appropriated tales, as well as general lore, history and myth about vampires and other beings of the darkness.

MAN SITTING IN A CAR ON A STREET

In this incident which took place in Abilene, Texas, a journalist was in his parked car late at night writing a check to pay an internet bill at a drop box when two children approached him for help, knocking on his car window. They were asking for a ride home to retrieve money from their mother to see a popular movie, at the movie theater close to the parked vehicle. What made this event highly unusual to the witness was that these children asked for a ride home when the final showing of the film was already half over. The following is a verbatim excerpt from his account. One of the two boys is identified as the “the spokesman” by the eyewitness. He is the only boy who talked during the discussion. When the eyewitness was reluctant to let the boys into his car they persisted. Here are his words:

“C’mon, mister. Let us in. We can’t get in your car until you do, you know,” the spokesman said soothingly.

(Note the child was apparently following the unspoken law that permission must be granted first as indicated by the statement “We can’t get in your car until you do, you know.” The testimony continues)

“Just let us in, and we’ll be gone before you know it. We’ll go to our mother’s house.” We locked eyes. To my horror, I realized my hand had strayed toward the door lock (which was engaged) and was in the process of opening it. I pulled it away, probably a bit too violently. But it did force me to look away from the children. I turned back. “Er … Um …,” I offered weakly and then my mind snapped into sharp focus.

For the first time I noticed their eyes. They were coal black. No pupil. No iris. Just two staring orbs reflecting the red and white light of the marquee. At that point, I know my expression betrayed me. The silent one had a look of horror on his face in a combination that seemed to indicate: A) The impossible had just happened and we’ve been found out!” The spokesman, on the other hand, wore a mask of anger. His eyes glittered brightly in the half- light. “Cmon, mister,” he said. “We won’t hurt you. You have to LET US IN. We don’t have a gun.”

That last statement scared the living hell out of me, because at that point by his tone he was plainly saying, “We don’t NEED a gun.” He noticed my hand shooting down toward the gear shift. The spokesman’s final words contained an anger that was complete and whole, and yet contained in some respects a tone of panic:

“WE CAN’T COME IN UNLESS YOU TELL US IT’S OKAY. LET … US …. IN!”

Oija Interactive: Museum of Talking Boards

 

Here’s a little Halloween internet fun: The Museum of Talking Boards, which comes complete with interactive boards, including the best-known of the lot- Oija. Have fun and don’t get too spooky.

Tesla’s Spirit Radio

Spooky Tesla Spirit Radio: Wormhole Voyage #1

Instructables has some nifty instructions for building Tesla’s spirit radio, a device which may, or may not, allow you to commune with the departed, listen to distant storms, and detect wormholes. All you need is a jam jar and few bits from Radio Shack. We have one here, in the Black Lodge and the spirits are restless today. But, then, we all knew that, didn’t we?

Birthday: Sylvia Plath (Oct. 27)

The Mystic

The air is a mill of hooks—-
Questions without answer,
Glittering and drunk as flies
Whose kiss stings unbearably
In the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer.

I remember
The dead smell of sun on wood cabins,
The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets.
Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?
Once one has been seized up

Without a part left over,
Not a toe, not a finger, and used,
Used utterly, in the sun’s conflagration, the stains
That lengthen from ancient cathedrals
What is the remedy?

The pill of the Communion tablet,
The walking beside still water? Memory?
Or picking up the bright pieces
Of Christ in the faces of rodents,
The tame flower-nibblers, the ones

Whose hopes are so low they are comfortable—–
The humpback in his small, washed cottage
Under the spokes of the clematis.
Is there no great love, only tenderness?
Does the sea

Remember the walker upon it?
Meaning leaks from the molecules.
The chimneys of the city breathe, the window sweats,
The children leap in their cots.
The sun blooms, it is a geranium.

The heart has not stopped.

Birthday of Dylan Thomas (Oct. 27)

A Process in the Weather of the Heart

A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.

A process in the eye forwarns
The bones of blindness; and the womb
Drives in a death as life leaks out.

A darkness in the weather of the eye
Is half its light; the fathomed sea
Breaks on unangled land.
The seed that makes a forest of the loin
Forks half its fruit; and half drops down,
Slow in a sleeping wind.

A weather in the flesh and bone
Is damp and dry; the quick and dead
Move like two ghosts before the eye.

A process in the weather of the world
Turns ghost to ghost; each mothered child
Sits in their double shade.
A process blows the moon into the sun,
Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin;
And the heart gives up its dead.

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Giant Spider, Thought Extinct Re-Found

from Ecoworldly:

Imagine a spider about the size of a standard-sized CD!  Researchers have discovered a rare super-sized spider.

Once thought to be extinct, the first Nephila komaci spider was first found in an old museum collection in South Africa in 2000.  A few years later, another specimen was found at a museum in Austria.  No other specimens were found until two females and one male were found in the Tembe Elephant Park in Africa.  The discovery is the first new Nephila species since 1879.