The Ghost Light of Bragg Road

Last weekend was an AWESOME weekend!!! :D

Texas Spirits hit the road last weekend for a field trip to see the ghost light of Bragg Road in Saratoga, TX!

Bragg Road is this straight, 8-mile stretch of dirt road lined with trees on both sides and swamp on the other side of the trees. The road is just barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other going opposite directions IF one of the cars is stopped and pulled over to the side as far as they can go.

The reports are a glowing ball -- maybe the size of a tennis ball or a volleyball -- that can change colors from pale blue to yellow to greenish white, that shoots down the road, sometimes darting in and out of the trees, and sometimes even passing into and through cars that happen to be on the road. The ghost light can be differentiated from passing car headlights (about which I will talk in more detail shortly) by the fact that it moves up and down and sideways, varying in speed. The ghost light might, according to reports, zoom down the road toward you, darting in and out of the treeline, then pause maybe 15 feet in front of you, hover there for a minute or so, then shoot off faster than lightening, disappearing up into the night sky.

The backstory is less interesting...

See, whenever an area -- anywhere in the United States, like, anywhere -- with a ghost light, the legend is always one of 3 stories:

1. A railroad engineer/conductor was beheaded, and now he travels the tracks, carrying a lantern, looking for his head.

2. Some young lover was meant to meet some other young lover at a specific place, often so they could run off together and elope or something. But the other young lover was killed, and thereby failed to make the rendezvous, and now the one young lover wanders the area still, searching for his/her soul mate. (I don't remember what the specific size/shape of the ghost light is attributed to... maybe it's the young lover's ghost carrying a lantern for the search.)

3. There is something called the Will-O-The-Whisp that has something to do with unbaptized babies or something like that.

(I'm at work, so I can't be bothered to do the research to refresh my memory, lol.)

But wherever you are in the U.S., if you go to a place with a ghost light, you will get one of the first two back stories as "historical fact" to explain the ghost light. (I don't think people really go in for the Will-O-The-Wisp theory anymore.)

Well, the Bragg Road Ghost Light just mashed-up the first 2 stories -- just to cover all their bases, I suppose. ;P

HOWEVER...

The fact that people employ an age-old, oft-duplicated urban legend or folk tale as back story to explain a phenomenon DOES NOT negate the existence of the phenomenon. It just means that human nature is that people feel a little safer with weird stuff when they have a recognizable story to explain it. (It's similar to our need to name things and categorize them, even if the categories are as random as "normal" and "paranormal". It's simply a Human Thang.)

Making the Bragg Road Ghost Light more intriguing is the fact that Paula, founder of Texas Spirits Paranormal Investigations, ACTUALLY SAW THE LIGHT! :D

So you KNOW I was excited about this investigation!

[Quick Note: Please don't think that I blow off research and background in general. If I were making an official report or writing a chapter in a book or something, I would be much more thorough. But since this is a blog entry, I'm being much less formal. I'm just trying to convey the experience of this weekend here.]

More intriguing, still, is the fact that John investigated Bragg Rood, too, at a different time, was not there for Paula's experience, and did not experience the ghost light.

So two of the people whom I look up to as investigators have opposing experiences with Bragg Road! And I get to investigate it for myself now!!! :D

Stephanie and Mike picked me up from my casa at 10am, which was a really nice start to my Saturday morning. Then we hooked up with Jesse, Paula and John, and I rode out to Kountze (where we had hotel rooms booked, though Bragg Road is in Saratoga) with Paula and John. This is where I got to hear their past experiences investigating there, and then I got to talk their ears off about different paranormal stuff I usually don't have an opportunity to ask their takes on.

When we got to Kountze, we checked-in and got to meet our cheerleaders for the evening: Paula's sister had brought some friends to investigate Bragg Road with us! I call them "cheerleaders" because, at first, they talked to us as though we were celebrities, lol. It was a nice ego-boost. ;) It was also cool that these non-investigators were going with us because I would get to gage the investigator response to anything that happened against the lay-person response (for lack of a better way of describing it). In other words, when a door slams by itself in an abandoned asylum, normal folks run away, and investigators run toward the slamming door. So it would be cool, investigating Bragg Road for my first time, to have 2 different perspectives through which to view whatever we all experienced out there. (It's like 2 different sets of data gathered from the same experiment, or a scene in a movie shot from two different cameras at two different angles to the action.)

As it turned out, I ended up getting 2 shots at Bragg Road.

Phase 1:

It turns out that Bragg Road -- or "Ghost Road", as it is locally known -- is something of a hang-out on Saturday night. We spent several hours watching head lights make their way slowly down either side of the road. There were times when the lights, on either side, were so distant that the stretch of road we were on was really, really dark (except for the moon, which shone extremely bright with no street lamps or buildings around).

It was really cool, too! I got a kick out of walking up and down the road in the darkness, hearing something on the other side of the trees from time to time, imagining that I was going to catch a glimpse of Bigfoot disappearing deeper into the woods. (There were no reports of Sasquatch sightings, but a guy can hope, right?)

The heavy traffic during Phase 1 turned out to be quite useful. Car headlights and swamp gas (literally, swamp gas!) are two of the go-to debunk theories for the Bragg Road ghost light. The road lies between stretches of swamp, and the road lies between 2 stretches of highway. So seeing what headlights on the road looked like -- particularly as they looked when they were at the ends of the road -- was really informative.

So Phase 1 lasted a few hours, and really wasn't the slightest bit spooky, but was fun. And it gave me a nice sense of the road. A "feel" for it, if you will.

Phase 1 ended after a few hours of nothing happening and our guest investigators, having learned of a near-by cemetery and an old local legend about a hotel that burned down, decided they wanted to go explore (possibly) more fertile paranormal territory.

Jesse and I, and two of our guest investigators, spent quite some time wandering around intersection of Bragg Road and Old Bragg Road, looking for signs of at least a foundation where a hotel could be, even if it burned down decades ago.

No luck there.

We also swung by Sutton Cemetery for a peak. (You can't investigate Texas cemeteries after dark unless you have permission -- Texas cemeteries are off-limits to the public after sundown -- and we didn't have permission.

I believe it was around 1:00 am when we all got back to the hotel.

When we got back to the hotel, I stepped outside for a smoke, and reflected on the night. The whole day had been a lot of fun! It was very cool!

When I got back inside, I found that Jesse had been looking for me. Was I interested in going back to Bragg Road?

My response was something akin to "Hells yeah!"

Mike had work stuff he needed to do, so he and Stephanie stayed at the hotel. And Paula and John had investigated the site before, so I suspect that had something to do with their choice not to go back out tonight.

So the party for Phase 2 was Jesse, 3 of our guest investigators and myself.

The guest investigators, it turns out, BROUGHT FOOD, which they shared! :D Tasty sandwiches and muffins, and even brownies! :) So we ate a bite before heading back out to Bragg Road.

Paula let me borrow her car for the return trip... poor, silly woman. It's a stick-shift, and it's been years since I owned a stick-shift, but I didn't grind her gears too badly. ;P (I'm inserting this part of the story just to torment Paula, should she read this entry, lol.)

Phase 2 was when things got interesting...

Along the 8-mile stretch of road are approximately 4 niches where you can pull over and park or turn around. The road gets really rough at the north end of the road, and Paula's car rides low, so for this second trip, we intended to stay on the south half of Bragg Road. So we pulled into the first niche and parked.

The moon had disappeared now. All the traffic had cleared out, taking their Saturday night adventures elsewhere, apparently. So, as far as we could tell, it was only the 5 of us on Bragg Road now. The road was almost pitch black, except for the stars directly above us.

We started off walking north down the road.

We were, maybe, a quarter of a mile away from where we had parked when we saw a tiny pale-blue light down at the south end of the road, where we had entered it. The tiny blue light quickly split into 2 lights: headlights. A car was coming down the road toward us.

Bragg Road creates a sort of optical illusion -- things seem closer than they are. I speculate it's because we -- American, 21st Century human beings -- are simply not accustomed to looking at a straight road a mile or more longer. We've grown up seeing straight roads, but they never expand 8 miles! And it's 8 miles of trees, so there are no buildings or street lights to tell your brain "That's about 2 blocks away". The visual references we usually have are not provided here.

So -- thanks to all the traffic traveling up and down Bragg Road during Phase 1 of our investigation -- we knew it would be a long time before the car that had just entered the road would reach us.

Maybe 3 seconds had passed before we turned back toward the south end of the road and saw that the headlights had disappeared.

Well, that was odd, we all agreed.

There was nowhere the car could have turned into because there were no turns on the road, except for those 4 niches. Had they been traveling faster than most, and pulled in where we had parked Paula's car?

Jesse said, "Paula's car is locked, right?"

"Um... no." We were, as far as I could tell, alone on the road. I hadn't thought we needed to lock Paula's car.

So Jesse and I head back for the niche, flashlights pointed ahead of us. We weren't running, but we weren't strolling, either. Most likely, no one visiting the road this late was looking for trouble, and they hadn't been there long enough to make a thorough search of Paula's car, even if they...

Paula's car sat alone in the dark niche, unmolested.

There were no other vehicles in sight.

We shone out flashlights back down south, looking for evidence of the vehicle we had seen (we thought) pull onto Bragg Road. Some of the cars, earlier that night, would drive down the road with only their parking lights on. Since they we forced (because of the uneven dirt road) to travel so slowly, there was very little chance of a mishap. Others traveled with their lights off completely. Again, as long as they didn't drive off the road into the trees, it was unlikely there would be any trouble. Also, the trees lining either side of the road were so dense that it was impossible for a car to stray far. (They would have to pay to have the dent knocked out of their bumper, but that was about the worst likely to happen. There was no chance they were going off-roading from Bragg Road.)

But our flashlights didn't catch the glimmer of any vehicles on their way up the road.

That wasn't surprising, though, as out flashlight beams, while impressive, were not likely to reach half a mile, much less a mile down the dark road. But another thing we had learned from Phase 1 of the night was that you could trust your ears on Bragg Road. Even when a car was creeping up on us without its lights earlier in the evening, we could still hear the low rumble of its engine. Even when you can't see it, you can hear that there is a car somewhere around you.

But Bragg Road was silent, as well.

We discussed it, and the consensus was that the only logical possibility for a car to disappear was by backing out, only it would have taken the car longer to back out than the time it took for it to disappear. In all honesty, the car really couldn't have reached the niche in which we were now standing in the time it took for the lights to disappear.

It was a genuine mystery.

It wasn't anything like the reports we had heard of the Bragg Road Ghost Light, and we all agreed that the light looked like headlights.

Let's call this "Experience #1".

So, we decided to drive Paula's car north, to the next niche, and park there. This way, we could explore the road further north than we had been able to thus far tonight, or would be able to if we simply kept walking north from the previous niche.

Once again, we set out wandering northward.

I still hadn't seen the Headless Horseman or Bigfoot, but the walk continued to be cool.

One of the guest investigators, Donna, slowly became convinced she was seeing something up ahead. It looked to her like the orange "cherry" of a cigarette. Like, maybe, someone way down the road, standing there and smoking.

Or something.

She and I found ourselves walking a bit faster, unconsciously sort of racing to find out what it was that she could see and the rest of us could not.

But then Jesse made a point: If this thing were the ghost light or anything paranormal, we wouldn't be able to catch up with it, most likely. It would probably continue to recede further and further away, like the end of a rainbow. And if it were just a guy smoking, perhaps we didn't really want to catch up to him. He might want his privacy. there were a (very) few homes off the road (much farther down), and if it turned out to be a resident of Bragg Road, they might not appreciate a bunch of strangers pestering them at what now must be 3:00am. And if it were an optical illusion, then -- again, like the rainbow example -- there was a strong chance we would never catch up to it.

One thing that seems to prove true again and again is that paranormal phenomena doesn't seem to be "catch-able". If you chase it, you loose it. Every time. It seems -- not just from my very limited experience, but according to those who have years, and even decades, of experience in the field -- that if the paranormal wants you to experience it, it will present itself to you.

So Jesse, wisely, turned us all around to head back in the direction of the car.

We didn't talk much, so the profound darkness was joined by a creepy silence that you only experience when you're that far removed from the city.

As we walked, Donna, kept looking behind her. I did too for a bit. Since we were the only ones on the road, I could comfortably walk backward without worry of bumping into... well, anything, really.

We hadn't quite covered the (maybe) quarter mile to the car when we all saw a pale blue light, far in front of us, somewhere near the south entrance to Bragg Road.

We stopped and watched it.

It was a single light. This didn't look like car headlights.

The blue-white "ball" (for lack of a better description; we had no way of gauging how far in front of us it was) grew brighter, more intense, and turned yellow.

We murmured to each other that it was, indeed, a single light. This was not, as far as we could tell, the headlights from a car.

But still, we didn't have a clue how far away it was.

Then the bright yellow light became more intense, and green. It was sort of golden in the center, but the edges were clearly green. We all confirmed this to each other.

As the light grew more intense, I wondered it it was moving closer to us.

But it wasn't moving up or down, or sideways. It remained directly in the center of the road.

And then it was gone.

What the hell was that?

We ran to the car, hopped in, and drove as fast as we safely could toward the south entrance to the road. If it was a car, we wanted to be able to rule that possibility out.

It felt like it took us forever to get to the entrance!

The unfriendly road wouldn't allow us to move too fast, lest it vibrate Paula's poor car apart. Besides, if a car had decided to park in the middle of the road with its lights off, we could be right on top of it before we even saw it! (This had happened to Jesse and me during Phase 1, when we were on foot. A pickup truck, no less! Right there in front of us and we didn't see it until it turned on its lights and started up! Gave me quite a start.)

As we drove, I think I made a joke about who else was secretly hoping that the light appeared in front of us, passed into the car and just hung out with us for a few seconds. But that might have happened at some other time that night.

I was almost on the highway before I even realized we had exited Bragg Road. (Did I mention that there are no streetlights anywhere?)

I stopped, and we discussed what we had just witnessed.

The fact that we didn't pass -- or run into -- a car or truck meant that we had seen the ghost light, right? That was the reasoning of the guest investigators. It was reported to change colors and to simply disappear.

Jesse and I pointed out, though, that it was also reported to dart around the road (sometimes ducking into the trees), and be seen to disappear straight up into the air, or to the side. This light, as far as we could tell, remained perfectly still.

Besides this, I had a theory that might debunk what we had just seen...

The theory began as a way of explaining to myself how those headlights we had seen earlier might simply disappear the way they had.



If you look at a map of Bragg Road (like the one above (click on it to see the entire image)) you'll notice that Farm To Market Road 787 appears to head straight up into Bragg Road, then veers-off to form a sort of lower-case "y" shape. If it didn't veer off so swiftly, 787 would become Bragg Road.

Now, I know a little about the physicality of optics from my years making short films with my buddies -- as well as my study of special effects, my study of slight of hand and illusion, and my obsession with 3-D (even when you see 3-D naturally, with your naked eye, the perception of depth is still a sort of optical illusion, though a reliable one) -- and if my understanding is near accurate, here is what I believe we saw:

Experience #1 - Because of the darkness, the treeline and the distance from the south entrance to Bragg Road, we couldn't really know if the headlights we saw were on Bragg Road.

We might have seen a vehicle traveling up 787, but because it appeared to be between the treeline, it looked like it was on Bragg Road. Then when it veered west -- the way 787 does -- the trees blocked our view of the headlights and it, effectively, "disappeared" as far as we could tell.

Experience #2 - This is where my logic gets a little strained...

At first, the headlights in Experience #1 appeared to be a single light, either because the treeline blocked one of the headlights or because of the sheer distance from the entrance. Then the single pale-blue light seemed to split into two separate lights, revealing the source to be a vehicle.

For Experience #2, we were maybe a mile further from the entrance.

So is it possible that, at that distance, a pair of headlights might seem to our eyes as a single light? The light we perceive, at that point, is being forced through the treeline which, in effect, would be like forcing it through a cylinder of solid material.

Have you ever tried to shine a wide flashlight beam through a pinprick in a thick, black cloth? It looks like a star in the night sky. If you have a large enough light source and enough pinpricks, you can actually simulate a night sky. We did this back in theatre when I was a teenager. The effect isn't like you're getting a tiny sliver of the light radiating from the source, but as though all the radiance from the light source is forcing itself through that tiny hole.

The light seems to become brighter, rather than diminished. Focused.

So what about the color changes, though?

I can't explain this scientifically, but here's my theory: Assuming Experience #2 was a car, the headlights might have appeared blue-white when it was furthest away from us, and possibly traveling down a slight incline in the road. Then when the incline leveled out, the light became yellow and more intense. Then as the car got closer, that yellow light might have (and this is where my logic really strains) picked up the green from the leaves of the treeline that was focusing the beam of headlights into a single, intense ball of light for us.

That makes sense, right?

The explanation was really for Jesse's benefit, because our guest investigators weren't interested in debunking their cool experience.

After that, we headed back to the hotel because it was a little after 3:30am and we all had a long trip ahead of us in a few hours.

I rode back to Austin with Jesse in Stephanie and Mike's car (they live up north, closer to me, while Paula and John live WAY south). It was a fun trip! Even after a mere 4 or so hours of sleep, I didn't feel drowsy the whole way back!

So, just between you and me, here's my take on my Bragg Road experiences...

I don't really know how much water my "explaination" holds, scientifically. I don't know enough about optics to be able to even know where to start researching my theory to prove or disprove it.

Also, I don't know if the stretch of 787 just south of Bragg Road is long enough to allow a vehicle's headlights to do what I attempted to describe just now. I, stupidly and amateurishly, failed to note exactly how long Experience #2 lasted, and by now my memory is way-fuzzy.

I know that the light didn't move the way the light Paula saw moved. And the perfect stillness, centered-ness of the light we saw is more in line with my explanation. But I also have no idea how far ahead of us it was. If it were the Ghost Light and it were near the southern entrance to Bragg Road, might it not have been able to bob up and down, left and right and still appear, to us, to be standing still and centered? If it were that far away, might it not have been able to dart up into the sky, or sideways into the trees, without us seeing the tell-tale tracer of light that revealed which direction it went?

I'm not trying to make this paranormal, and I'm not trying to make it not-paranormal. I believe true skepticism questions both sides of an equation. I know zealot skeptics who will accept any explanation that points away from the paranormal, and I know zealot believers who will accept any explanation that points toward the paranormal. But as an investigator, I simply have to admit that I don't have enough data either way.

Still, I've got 2 interesting experiences under my belt! :D

Also, even though you're not supposed to enter cemeteries in Texas after dark, I might -- maybe -- have pulled out my digital audio recorder when we stopped by Sutton Cemetery and I might -- maybe -- have pressed Record, and so I might -- maybe -- have caught some voices that aren't supposed to be on the track I recorded. ;P

I still need to listen to it.

Tonight might be a good night to do that, huh?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

:D

AWESOME Birthday!!! :D

This has been a great weekend!!!

My weekend started with money in the bank -- a rare occasion for me, lol. I worked a couple extra days a couple weekends ago, which took care of ALL my bills (to date) and scored me a night of fine dining -- Pappa John's pizza for Brian & myself -- and scored me a couple of books!

First, I'm doing my shopping after work Friday morning, and I see that the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book is out! When I first heard about And Another Thing... I wasn't certain whether or not I would be reading it, since it's not by Douglas Adams. But I picked it up in the store and read the introduction, and I laughed out loud twice!

So I'm 192 pages into it (just finished Chapter 9 (of 12)).

Eoin Colfer is quite clever and whimsical!

The other book I picked up was Jason & Grant's second book about their adventures in The Atlantic Paranormal Society, which Brian is currently reading. (He, too, has been cramming his head full of paranormal research, but he paused all his reading to dive into Seeking Spirits, as I probably would have done, were I not working on H2G2, Book 6 of 3).

We also watched some Castle (Season 1) and the first disc of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. And listened to some Spooky Southcoast and a few episodes of Paranormal Podcast.

AND...

I got past the place I was hung-up on in Level 6 of Tomb Raider: Underworld -- the second swinging roof-hammer in Valhalla -- and am now on Level 8!!! :D

I'm a bit stuck again, at the moment, though. I jump down the thing, kill the giant monster-guy, grab the gold brick, jump over to the little island thingy, climb the other thing, swing over to get the other gold brick, but then when I swing back to the one platform thingy I always overshoot and land in the toxic pool.

But that's okay!

I'm on the first part of the LAST LEVEL and I am not too terribly far from defeating Underworld!!! :D

Then, hopefully, the game will let me go back and re-play my favorite levels, like the previous games did.

Oh, and also, a lot of people posted some really sweet things to me on Facebook, which is cool!

Oh, and did I mention I'm really diggin' KISS's new album, Sonic Boom?!! They've got a couple of anthem-type songs that stand up to my all-time favorite KISS songs from any era! :D

So life is pretty groovy for Ray Jay!!! :D

OH! And check it out...

Last night/this morning, as I was winding down for bed, I did a tarot spread for the main character of one of the stories I'm working on, and it was FREAKY how informative it was!!! On the one hand, the reading provided me in-depth information about the character that was truly enlightening (which is what I expected), but on the other hand, the reading ACTUALLY CONFORMED to the fictitious fate I had already worked-out for my character! (Which I did not expect!) I'm talking about some specific aspects of the character's "life"! It was uncanny! I don't think even Carl Jung could explain what the hell's going on there, lol!

But it was very, very cool!

Okay, I really need to get back to work.

So PEACE!!! :D

Happy Birthday To Me...

Okay, technically it's no longer my birthday.

But since I'm off come 6:00am, I'm gonna celebrate another day. I've got some Castle Season 1 at home, and Netflix is supposed to be sending some Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip tomorrow, too. PLUS, my li'l bro scored us brewskies, so there we go! :)

My celebration today was as follows:

I got home to my friend Traci's b-day present: The Psychic Tarot Oracle Cards by John Holland. It's this GORGEOUS deck with a bit of a more positive bent than the well-known Rider-Waite deck. (If someone says "tarot cards", the images that immediately pop into your mind are, most likely, from the classic Rider-Waite deck.)

I'm a fan of divination tools, but I've never really explored tarot cards too deeply because the decks creep me out! I'm not kidding, I just get this very negative buzz off traditional tarot cards. I'm even talking about regular playing cards used as a tarot deck. I don't know why, it's just creepy to me.

But John Holland designed this deck that's completely not creepy! I knew there were different types of decks out there, and I've sort of browsed them from time to time online, but never really found a deck that I connected with.

But then my buddy Traci hooks me up! I think I can learn tarot from this deck.

Which is COOL!

Because, first of all, even Carl Jung recognized the value of using a divination tool in order to see a problem or situation from a new perspective. He specifically discussed tarot cards because they work with archetypal images and notions which connect with the subconscious. So whether you believe God (or one of His angels) manipulates the cards in order to speak to the person asking for advice (be it you or someone you're reading for), you can still see how the random images flipped over during a reading can give the mind something to free-associate upon, freeing up the querrant's creative problem-solving abilities and allowing them to, possibly, see a solution where they previously had seen an impassible problem.

But I'm not planning on setting up shop in the back of a New Age book store anytime soon. I'm excited about these cards because you can use them to help you create fiction! :D

This isn't an original idea. That is to say, it was original when whoever first thought of it thought of it, but I am not original in my usage of it.

You'll hear many writers talk about receiving stories, or characters or situations, as though they were a gift from somewhere. You'll hear writers talk about "the Muse". But whether you believe in an unseen force, or merely recognize the mind's own astounding and ineffable inner-workings, using tarot cards is an interesting -- and FUN -- way to battle Writer's Block! :D

But I'm not trying to be politically correct here, I TOTALLY believe in unseen intelligences helping us out in our physical journey! (I named my blog after the concept of wu wei, after all.) I'm a completely metaphysical cat. I have observed, over the last 2 or 3 years, that my intuition seems to be almost paranormal at times, and I'm hoping that learning my new tarot deck will hone these inexplicable insights that I sometimes get.

It happens, approximately, once in a blue moon now. So I'm hoping to increase that frequency to, maybe, once in a full moon, then maybe once every other weekend.

If I turn full-on psychic, I'll let you know. :)

Telepathically! :D

OOH! OOH!

I'm writing on something! It sort of combines EVERYTHING that I'm into, believe in, believe in the possibility of, or just read about!!! I don't know if it will grow into a short story, novella, a novel or anything at all, but it's fun writing it! If it grows into a novella or longer, I'm thinking of calling it 2012: The End of... some stuff...

Catchy, no? :)

Oh, right! I was telling you how I've celebrated my birthday so far...

Okay, so after I got to know my new tarot deck a bit, I watched Black Eyed Peas' new video "Meet Me Halfway" -- which was GORGEOUS! Then I went to sleep listening to a playlist made up of my favorite skits from (meaning, "the majority of") all -- seriously, ALL -- of Monty Python's albums!

Then I woke up and started listening to SModcast #95 -- which just happens to be EXCELLENT! Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier carried me through the processes of cooking breakfast and lunch, getting ready for work, and my drive to work. Once here, they kept me entertained as I got my night's coffee brewing, then I had to take a break. Then, after the heavy-lifting of my shift was complete and everyone left the station in mine and Pete's hands (on Thursday's I'm not the only one here overnight), Misters Smith and Mosier kept me laughing past midnight, carrying me through the end of my official 39th birthday.

By the way, "SModcats 95: RB07701" is worth listening to, if only for the "audiobook" version of Shootin' the Sh*t with Kevin Smith: The Best of the SModcast!!! I mean, I love the episode because I love SModcast, but the "audiobook" bit is brilliant!!! :D

So then, when SModcats wrapped up, I sat down and started typing this.

And now I'm off.

And I plan to be... well... incoherent from the time I get home from work until sometime late Friday night/early Saturday morning, so you won't be hearing from me too soon. (I try to stay away from the keyboard when I'm drinking. I get very, very happy, you see... And all these words from the farthest depths of my vocabulary surface and start hurling themselves at my fingertips... To say my prose becomes "whimsical" is sort of akin to saying that Grandma getting drunk and burtsing into a stip-tease is "sexy", ya know? I mean, Grandma may be in terrific shape for her age, but you still just don't wanna see that!)

International Ray Jay Day!!! :D

As I type this sentence, I will turn 39 in 41 minutes!!!

YAY ME!

My birthday plans, you ask? WORKIN', BABY!!! :D

Dat's right! Ray Jay is a workin' fool, baby!

I got an early b-day present... Last week TSPI took some group pics for our NEW WEBSITE... And I sent the once of me to my Gnomey-Goddess AND SHE SAID SHE THOUGHT I LOOK CUTE!!! :D hee-hee I mean, I know she's just being a sweetheart, but I don't care. She didn't break up with me after seeing them, so everything's cool.

How do I know she's just being a sweety? Well, you decide...

(Click on the pic to see the whole thing. The pics looked smaller when I previewed this entry. Sry.)



I love the pics, though! I've only seen Paula's pics so far, but they're great! (I just can't help lookin' like a bit of a dork because... well... I AM a dork, lol. But I'm a (soon-to-be) 39-year-old dork who looks 30, lol! So there! I got carded for smokes before work tonight, actually!)

Plus, we're a handsome bunch, aren't we?



PLUS... We're good at figurin' out perplexin' stuff, too!

OOH! And Paranormal Activity last Saturday was a blast! I had a lot of fun! :D

Wait, wait! I gotta show you one more pic...

The Boys of Texas Spirits

I'm the pasty one.

What's the sexy-sounding phrase for "pasty"? Is there one? Like, if you're filling out a resume to be a model, what's a more appealing way to say "trout-belly white"?

I think we should have a Texas Spirits calendar. Right? Like, we could sell it as a fundraiser?

No one else in the group is with me on this, though. :P

Okay, so guess what...

I think the Universe wanted to give me a birthday present, because one of the shows I air during my shift is late Night with Jimmy Fallon and you know who the guests are tonight?

MONTY-FRICKIN'-PYTHON!!!

I kid you not! As I type this, the remaining members of Monty Python are all together on the Jimmy Fallon show!!!

Like, how often does that happen?!!

And what are the ODDS that would happen just as the clock ticks over to the day of my birth?!

I'm tellin' ya... Someone Upstairs kinda likes me. ;)

(I mean, have you SEEN my girlfriend?! That's not MY doing, lol! That's Divine Intervention.)

So, officially, my first birthday present was from Brian. Back in August he gave me a MEL 8704 -- otherwise known as a mel-meter!!! That was just super-sweet of him 'case those thangs ain't cheap.

Then my 2nd present was from God. That's the Monty Python episode of Jimmy Fallon.

Then #3 is waiting for me at home, lol! I was talking to my friend Traci last week and she said she had gotten me something for my birthday. I started to do that knee-jerk response that we all do, "Aw, that's sweet, but you shou--"" when she cut me off with "NO, it's AWESOME!" Whatever she's giving me, she doesn't have one, yet, and she's jealous, lol. So I'm looking forward to whatever it is!!! She gave it to Brian, so it's waiting for me at home when I get off work.

No, wait, that's the 4th present, and God gave me the 3rd, because yesterday my sweety said she liked my ghost-hunter pics, so THAT ONE was b-day present #2. :D

Oh... Huh...

Just noticed, Michael Palin isn't on the Jimmy Fallon show. It's 4 of the 5 remaining Pythons.

Wait, what am I doing still writing this? I'm going to watch the Pythons.

PEACE!!!

:D

Pondering PARANORMAL ACTIVITY Before I See It...

Even after that last entry, I can't seem to stay away from the blog, lol.

Actually, I just want to jot down a few thoughts before I see Paranormal Activity so that I can compare these notes to my thoughts and feelings afterward.

My big question is this: Will Paranormal Activity's scare scenes -- designed to work for a mainstream audience -- actually work against the experience of the paranormal audience?

Here's what I mean...

If you were on an investigation, and you experienced all the stuff that the kids in Blair Witch experienced, it really would freak you the hell out. Everyone investigating would flip out, because 98% of the stuff you experience in an actual investigation just isn't as overtly inexplicable as the things those characters experience.

And I was thinking about how mainstream audiences responded to Blair Witch because (I speculate) the scares weren't nearly as "hard-core" as mainstream Horror scares, right?

So...

If Paranormal Activity has as many scares as a mainstream audience needs to be scared by a movie, will that prove to be too much to hold the Suspension of Disbelief from folks who actually study this stuff?

Like I said, if you read enough accounts of actual haunting activity (never mind actually going out and investigating these claims, I'm just talking about reading 2nd- or 3rd-hand accounts in books) The Blair Witch Project is convincingly realistic.

By comparison, consider this:

Rambo: First Blood, Part II is basically a Western from the '60s or '70s. (The former gunslinger strolls into a corrupt town, then ends up shooting up all the rustler outlaws.) But the Action elements (the stunts, the reason you watch the movie) are designed to be bigger and more intense than what you've seen in previous movies of this type.

However, when you watch the movie now (well... and back then, if you weren't a 15-year-old when you watched it, lol) you laugh, because in pursuit of bigger and more intense action the writers/director/stunt coordinators/et. al. sort of ignore basic physics, lol. Yeah, you've never seen action like that before, but that's mostly because previous filmmakers were concerned with realism.

So my query, going into Paranormal Activity, is whether or not the film will go over-the-top in order to satisfy Horror film-goers' expectations, and whether that (if it is the case) will actually detract from the believability of those who study this stuff.

Now, on the other hand, The Exorcist stands up to the scrutiny of clergy and others who have actually witnessed exorcisms, and the movie scares the bejeebers out of just about everyone who watches it. It manages to be believable AND monumentally scary at the same time.

And the titular "activity" of the movie will undoubtedly be "inhuman" (or, as it is popularly known, "demonic"), so there is a great possibility that the flick will be both believable and mind-numbingly scary. (Everything I've heard first-, second-, or eighth-hand about "inhuman" activity is just mind-pummelingly disturbing, so I'll probably scream like a little girl at the flick.)

Anyway, like I said, I just wanted to jot these thoughts down -- for myself, really -- before I see the movie so that I can compare notes afterward.

WEEKEND!!! :D

Check it out: This is my "Friday" AND the stressless-est day of my work week!

I have, effectively, 3 hours before I need to pay close attention to what's going on (because there is a 2nd master control op working the back area, which starts hoppin' around this time), and then 2 hours later I'M OFF FOR 3 DAYS!!!

WOO-HOO!

All it took was working 2 extra days last week (and getting paid, thanks to overtime, as though I had worked 3 days) for me to SO appreciate my weekend! I think we often forget that receiving extras in life is excellent, but being reminded of the cool stuff we already have in our life is really quite cool, as well! :)

So, every once in a while I check out the movies at Hulu, just 'cause it's kind of like when I was a kid and would watch movies on HBO on the weekends or during the summer. You know? Like, you don't get to pick any movie ever made, so the selection is limited. But unlike HBO back then, you can watch any of these movies whenever you have the time.

It's like being on a desert island and, like, a native comes up to you and says "Okay, we've got a multiplex hut on the other side of the island, and the movies are free, but we only have these movies to choose from. But you can watch any or all of them you want. But you have to pick from these."

Are ya feelin' me, here, or am I just a madman?

Anyway, I find it novel.

And I particularly like Hulu's selection, because they include both past hits AND past Oldies-But-Baddies! :) Like, if you haven't seen the movie, you don't know what you're getting into, necessarily, lol.

BUT...

They also include movies that might not have been successful financially, but were good flicks, none the less!

FOR INSTANCE:

Back in 1996 there was this overlooked classic called The Phantom. It was based on an old 1930s Adventure comic strip. Now, as geeky as I am, I actually wasn't a fan of The Phantom before the movie came out. I was aware of it, I knew it was part of comic-book history and inspired comic books that came after it, but I had never bothered to read any of the daily strips or the comic books that came after it. (As opposed to The Shadow, for instance. When the Alec Baldwin film came out, I had already been well-versed in the radio series -- when Orson Wells played the titular character -- and even read Bill Sienkiewicz's late-80s comic book miniseries. So when the 1994 flick came out, I was aware of the radio show that started it all, as well as the pulp novels and early comic series, as well as how they deviated from the original source material. None of this is true for The Phantom.)

But I'm kind of a sucker for '30s/'40s genre stories. It's probably seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark back when I was 10 or 11, but a adventure movie that is based on a comic book hero and takes place in the 1930s/1940s... COUNT ME IN! :D

This flick also had the added draws of Kristy Swanson (whom I had been crushing on for a long time by that point) and a screenplay by Jeffrey Boam.

Now, I should point out that in June of 1996 -- when The Phantom was released -- I was 4 years into my study of fiction writing, and Boam has become a minor deity for me. he was one of my boyz! I don't remember my high school graduation, but I remember the rehearsal for it. And while I waited during the rehearsal, I was reading the novelization for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (which was a novelization of a Jeffrey Boam script). Before Last Crusade, Boam had given us one of the last scary mainstream vampire movies, The Lost Boys. (I mean, yeah, Lost Boys also sort of sealed the deal, making vampires sex symbols rather than monsters forever more, but I really loved the flick and still remember it fondly.) And sometime around Last Crusade, Boam also gave us the badass follow-up to Lethal Weapon! That was (for a teen in the '80s, anyway) an AWESOME movie!!! Ridiculous amounts of violence, revenge, male bonding... It was my generations' equivalent of 300! :D

And then I was living in L. A. while they were shooting Lethal Weapon 3, and my agent scored me a copy of Boam's screenplay for that movie, and that was one of the most amazing reads ever! I was in Austin by the time the movie actually hit cinemas, and I remember being astounded that reading Boam's screenplay was exactly like watching the finished product! I can't describe the experience and do it justice, but it's like this: I read Boam's screenplay, and I have just as much fun reading the movie as watching Lethal Weapon 2, right? Then I see the movie, and it is exactly the way I remember it! EXCEPT for the fact that Richard Donner is a badass director, so his shots were better than I imagined! So I had already "seen" the 2nd-best version of the movie when I read Boam's script, then I saw the BEST version of the film when I actually saw the movie.

Like I said, hard to explain.

But so, I see trailers for The Phantom and notice that Boam wrote the script, and I was sold!

Then the movie comes out and I'm one of, like, 100 people who go see it and everyone forgets it was even made, lol.

But the movie is good! :D

I mean, if your taste is similar to mine (like, if the things I described above interest you, too) then you should have a good time watching it!

To that end, I'm linking to it, just in case you've got a couple hours and are curious...



ALSO...

As I was browsing Hulu's current movie titles, I was astounded to find THE REMAKE OF DAWN OF THE DEAD!!! :D

If you haven't seen it yet, this is an EXCELLENT movie!!! The first couple of Halloweens after the movie came out, I made re-watching it part of my holiday tradition! (of course, being a bit of a snob, I prefer watching the Director's Cut, with more talking -- and character- and story-development -- but free is free, right?

So if you're in the mood, check it out!



As for me this weekend, I have some exciting prospects!!! :D

I should have the first disc of Season 1 of Castle in from Netflix when I get home, so I can introduce Brian to that show!

Actually, before the show started, he introduced me to it by playing the trailers on ABC.com for me. He was really excited about it, but that was months before it actually came out. I believe he forgot about it until I mentioned it recently.

So I get to re-watch the brilliant first season with my li'l bro.

Also, I recently purchased the series Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital, and Brian said he would be down for watching that with me, too! :) I like King's TV work, and Kingdom Hospital promises to keep us in that Halloween-y mood. ;P Plus, Brian and I had forsworn pay-TV when the series originally came out, so it will be cool to finally see it!

But that's Friday and Sunday...

For Saturday... Texas Spirits is getting together to take some new group pictures for our brand new site (which should be up and running Monday) and then we're going to watch Paranormal Activity!!! :D

Have you heard about this movie yet?!

It's purported to be The Exorcist for the New Millennium. The Net-trailer gives you just a few hints at the story and focuses on the reactions of audience members watching it.

Now, you can say "Yeah, they don't want to show the actual movie because it sucks," but I've heard hard-core Horror movie guys who have seen it swear that this movie is scary.

It's only in limited release right now (and Austin is one of the lucky cities that has it), and I believe that actually speaks well of the movie.

See, Hollywood (and by "Hollywood" I'm referring to the industrial structure that pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into a single film so it can make a billion back, the mainstream organization, if you will) is suspicious of anything new. It is especially suspicious if this something new was created by someone who isn't part of the conglomerate, with their own money, without input by the established collective. If they by an original movie, they usually let it screen in NYC and/or L. A. and then release it on DVD and ship it off overseas.

Rarely do new, original, truly independent films get a wide release.

However, if a film elicits a strong enough reaction from test audiences to make the studio that purchased the film think they might actually make a lot of money off this flick, the movie gets a limited release. If the limited release creates enough word-of-mouth buzz and makes enough money, then the studio puts it into wide release and lets the dough roll in.

The last time I recall this happening with a Horror movie was The Blair Witch Project.

Now, that's the next thing you might protest. "Omg! I remember everyone and their dog telling me The Blair Witch Project was SO SCARY, but then I saw it was just annoying and stupid!"

Okay, first of all, I can explain that phenomenon...

Austin was one of the limited-release cities for Blair Witch, and I saw it back before everyone else did.

And, believe it or not, it was scary back then, lol.

See, the first round of people who saw Blair Witch in limited release were serious film fans. We were a lot that can sit through a weird movie (that, at that time, we weren't certain if what we were looking at was actual found footage or a clever storytelling device) and just get lost in the characters and story. So the minimalist scares -- the stuff you hear but don't see, the stuff that's implied but never explained -- really did create a haunting, creepy-ass effect that stuck with us after we left the theater.

And then we ran out and told everyone we knew "This is the scariest movie ever!"

And then, after months of hearing a few people -- and a lot of critics -- talk about how scary Blair Witch is, the movie is finally released across the nation.

And everyone rushes out to see it, mainly based on curiosity and our eager proclamations, and is disappointed, lol.

But I think this is due to 2 phenomena: (1) we over-hyped it for everyone else ("scariest movie ever" is kind of a lot to live up to when we just went into the theater expecting little or nothing) and (2) if the only horror movies you've seen are the high-budget, ultra-violent, SFX extravaganzas, then a little home-movie with whiny young people not seeing anything really is quite a let-down, lol. ;P

But all of that notwithstanding, I get the impression that Paranormal Activity really isn't another Blair Witch scenario. I was a kid back when The Exorcist was new, and I remember how that movie scarred (I mean "scarred", too, not "scared", lol) viewers for the next two decades! I don't know how the film is viewed, say, by folks my daughter's age, but when we old folks say a movie is "this generation's The Exorcist," they're not speaking lightly.

And that's what I'm doing this Saturday, lol!

And I'm a little bit concerned, too, lol. See, I've been reading a lot of books about "negative entities" (for the reals, actual entities that have affected actual home owners) recently, and it has creeped me out enough that I've sort of been avoiding genuinely scary movies so far this Halloween season, lol. I've been sticking with the cheesy old horror flicks, or genuinely scary horror movies that I've seen so many times I'm sort of imune to them.

And now I'm going to see this generation's The Exorcist with my Texas Spirits teammates, lol.

I'm a bit afraid I will scream like a little girl and never, ever live it down! ;P

If these cats see me soil myself at a movie they will probably just never let me hear the end of it.

Now, in my defense, I don't seem to be creeped-out during real investigations so far. For some reason I seem to get into this Investigator Zone that makes me curious, rather than spooked. I'm proud to say that I have (so far, anyway) run toward loud and unexplained noises rather than away from them.

None-the-less...

Unless we find ourselves on an investigation during which several members of the team get truly scared and I don't within the next week or three, these cats will hound me! ;P (It'll be the ladies who are the most ruthless, too! You mark my words.)

Still, I anticipate this Saturday will be amazingly fun, and if I'm going to watch this movie, I can't think of a more fun bunch to watch it with!

I'm rockin' the Grampers, though...

Just to be safe.

Workin' for the Weekend...

Brian & I were supposed to go investigate a cemetery Saturday night with Texas Spirits Research Team (not to be confused with Texas Spirits Paranormal Investigations, which helps clients), but at the last minute I was recruited to work. :(

I mean, I can certainly use the overtime. And Saturday's investigation is just for fun and experience. But still...

On a positive note, I believe I'm getting the hang of my new shift at work! :) It's challenging, but I believe (knock on wood) that I'm getting into my groove!

Also, when not working I've been reading like a maniac, lol. I don't remember when I last talked about what I'm reading, so there may be some overlap. But here goes...

I just recently finished Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, which was AWESOME!!! :D This cat is really cool! His books may fill the void left by Michael Crichton's untimely departure. I was shocked by the subject matter. Some of the Noetics stuff is right up my alley as a paranormal investigator, and his take on Free Masons goes completely against everything I've heard as a consipiracy theory enthusiast, lol. But, as usual, The Lost Symbol is rich with history and science and action!!! Seriously, Dan Brown ROCKS!

I also just finished Shadow World by Brad Steiger. That was a very provocative read. really cool.

I'm following that up with The Complete Approach: A Scientific and Metaphysical Guide to the Paranormal by Barry Fitzgerald and Dustin Pari (of Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International fame). One thing I like about their approach is the combination of scientific and metaphysical. When you read Jason & grant's book or Troy Taylor's books, you get the straight-up skeptical, scientific approach -- which is really useful and certainly has it's place! But the scientific approach tends to give the metaphysical aspect a complete miss because metaphysical stuff can't be imperically proved. However, reading a book that talks about paranormal phenomena simply from a metaphysical standpoint often takes a lot of stuff for granted, sort of makes assumptions that an investigator really shouldn't be comfortable taking for granted.

So a book that looks at the questions from both angles truly is a novel approach! (From what I've read, anyway.)

The book is a bit thinner than I would prefer. It's kind of designed to be a primer for newbies going into the field, or a refresher for investigators wo might be getting just a hair too comfortable with older ideas and practices.

And, of course, there's nothing wrong with this at all! But I'm coming off Steiger, who explores each topic in some detail, so Barry and Dustin's book feel a little light in my hands, lol.

Still, their observations are fascinating and they're not afraid to take a stand on a topic and simply say "We believe this phenomenon is this," which is refreshing.

After The Complete Approach, I plan to head back to Steiger and Beyond Shadow World, which I'm looking forward to! :D

When I'm not studying the paranormal I'm reading stuff that makes me feel all Halloween-y. I just finished The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. AWESOME!!! It has all the charm of a Dr. Seuss book, but with that Charles Addams kind of wicked whimsy. :) It sort of reminded me a little of reading the very first Harry Potter book... but sort of more like the Lemony Snicket books...

Anyway, "written by Neil Gaiman" is really all you need to know. ;)

I'm following The Graveyard Book up with Ray Bradbury's A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities. It's pretty cool...

I'm not a huge Bradbury fan. That is to say, I LOVE his stories and his imagination... but his writing style is kind of poet-y for my taste. I'm not a very literary sort: I grew up on movies and I actually enjoy the way screenplays are written. Very sort of functional and efficient. I've never been into poetry (except when trying to woo a fine lass), so sometimes Bradbury's style (not just him, I get this with Koontz and even King from time to time) takes me out of the story.

Don't get me wrong: When it works, it SOOOOOOO WORKS!!! I mean, and The Halloween Tree and From the Dust Returned just flat-out RULE!!!

But A Graveyard for Lunatics is a murder mystery set in 1950s L. A., so Bradbury's flowery sort of "back when we drank pop from bottles and the sunset coursed through our veins" doesn't really match the material. I mean, his dialog and characters and story is all dead-on. If Graveyard were a film it would be riveting. But as a bradbury novel... it's sort of a wierd combination of story and style. (I know a few Bradbury fans -- one in particular -- who may have my testicals for saying that, but it's my opinion and my blog.)

Still, Bradbury ALWAYS gives you a world that's fun to hang out in, and I'm having fun hanging out in this one.

OOH...!

Dollhouse and Castle have started up again!!! :D I've been too busy to wacth the season premiers, but I hope to catch up thanks to the blessed and loving Hulu!!! :D Hulu really does love and, and we should all give thanks! ♥

Okay, so I'm working this weekend, but I hope YOU have a magnificent and fun-filled weekend!!!

:D