DAY OF TERROR: Cowardly fanatics unleashed death and mayhem at the Boston Marathon April 15, 2013.
By C. Michael Forsyth
Brace yourself! The Week From Hell has rolled around again: Nine days that have been plagued by disaster and tragedy over the course of many centuries. On April 15, 2013, the Boston Marathon was cut short when two pressure-cooker bombs exploded killing three people and injuring an estimated 264 others. But that was only one of the more recent entries in a string of heartbreaking catastrophes. Here are just a few of the past tragedies that have befallen the world between April 12 and April 20:
April 12: U.S. Civil War begins April 13: Apollo 13 disaster April 14: Lincoln Shot April 15: Titanic Sinks April 16: Virginia Tech Massacre April 17: Russian troops slaughter gold mine workers April 18: San Francisco Earthquake April 19: Oklahoma City Bombing, Bay of Pigs, Waco tragedy. April 20: Columbine High School Massacre
Until the Boston bombing I treated this historical oddity with a certain amount of gallows humor. Now I’m just praying that people around the world are spared from harm–while my family and I take shelter till the disaster-prone time frame blows over. The Titanic and the other incidents above are just the “tip of the iceberg.” Here, drawn mostly from Wikipedia, is the full list:
BROTHER vs. BROTHER: The Civil War ripped America in two.
APRIL 12
• 1861 – The U.S. Civil War begins when Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. • 1864 –The Fort Pillow massacre: Confederate forces murder most of the African American soldiers who surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee. • 1945 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office. • 1968 – Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah. • 1970 – Soviet submarine K-8, carrying four nuclear torpedoes, sinks in the Bay of Biscay four days after a fire on board. • 2002 – A female suicide bomber blows herself up at the entrance to Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market, killing 7 and wounding 104. • 2007 – A suicide bomber penetrates the Green Zone and detonates in a cafeteria inside the parliament building, killing Iraqi MP Mohammed Awad and wounding more than 20 other people. • 2010 – A train derails near Merano, Italy, after running into a landslide, causing nine deaths and injuring 28 people.
UNLUCKY NUMBER: Astronaut James Lovell was lost in space aboard Apollo 13.
APRIL 13
1919 — British troops gun down 100 Indian civilians in the Amritsar Massacre.
• 1945 – German troops butcher more than 1,000 political and military prisoners in Gardelegen, Germany. • 1948 – The Hadassah medical convoy massacre: In an ambush, 79 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital and a British soldier are slaughtered by Arabs in Sheikh Jarra near Jerusalem. • 1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the sinister mind-control program MKULTRA. • 1970 – An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes while en route to the Moon, stranding the crew in space. • 1975 – Bus massacre in Lebanon: Attack by the Phalangist resistance kills 26 militia members of the P.F.L. of Palestine, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War. • 1992 – The Great Chicago Flood. Damaged wall of a utility tunnel beneath the Chicago River opens into a breach that floods basements with an estimated 250 million gallons of water.
ASSASSIN John Wilkes Booth ruins the Lincolns’ night at the theater.
APRIL 14
* 1846 – The Donner Party expedition sets out from Springfield, Illinois for California. After being trapped by heavy snow, nearly half of the 87 pioneers die, many eaten by their starving companions. * 1865 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth. • 1909 – Adana Massacre is launched by Turkey’s Ottoman Empire against Armenian civilians. Between 15,000–30,000 people are killed. • 1944 – A massive explosion in India’s Bombay harbor kills 800. • 1986 – President Ronald Reagan orders major bombing raids against Libya, killing 60 people including an infant girl, reportedly Colonel Gaddafi’s daughter. • 1986 – Massive 2.2 pound hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded. • 1988 – The USS Samuel B. Roberts strikes a mine in the Persian Gulf. • 1994 – In northern Iraq, two U.S. Air Force fighters mistakenly shoot down two U.S. Army helicopters, killing 26 people. • 1999 – NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees. Yugoslav officials say 75 people are killed. • 1999 – A severe hailstorm strikes Sydney, Australia causing $2.3 billion in insured damages, the most costly natural disaster in Australian history. • 2010 – Nearly 2,700 are killed in a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai, China.
APRIL 15
• 1715 – The Pocotaligo Massacre triggers the start of the Yamasee War in colonial South Carolina. In the first year of the war, the Yamasee Indians lose about a quarter of their population, either killed or enslaved. • 1912 – The RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two and a half hours after hitting an iceberg. 1,517 people are killed. • 1941 – In the Belfast Blitz, the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) bombs Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing 1,000 people. • 1969 – North Korea shoots down a United States Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board. • 1970 – During the Cambodian Civil War, massacres of the Vietnamese minority results in 800 bodies flowing down the Mekong River into South Vietnam. • 1979 – A disastrous 7.1 earthquake occurs on Montenegro coast. • 1989 – British soccer fans crush together at Liverpool’s Hillsborough Stadium in the FA Cup Semi Final, causing 96 deaths. • 1989 – The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in the People’s Republic of China. Thousands are massacred by Communist troops. • 2002 – Air China Flight CA129 crashes into a hillside during heavy rain and fog near Busan, South Korea, killing 128. * 2013 — An estimated 264 runners and spectators are injured and 3 are killed when a pair of young terrorists detonate bombs at the Boston Marathon.
CRAZED student went on killing spree at Virginia Tech.
APRIL 16
• 73 A.D. – Roman legions crush the Jewish revolt at Masada after months of seige. Hundreds of Israelites commit suicide rather than be taken as slaves. • 1945 – About 7,000 civilians and wounded soldiers perish when the German refugee ship Goya is sunk by a Soviet submarine torpedo, marking one of the worst tragedies in maritime history. • 1947 – Texas City Disaster: An explosion on board a freighter in port causes the city of Texas City, Texas, to catch fire, killing almost 600. • 1990 – “Doctor Death” Jack Kevorkian carries out his first assisted suicide. • 1992 – The Katina P. runs aground off of Maputo, Mozambique and 60,000 tons of crude oil spill into the ocean. • 2007 – Virginia Tech massacre: The deadliest spree killing in modern American history. Seung-Hui Cho kills 32 and injures 23 before committing suicide.
THE KILLING FIELDS: Millions were slaughtered by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge fanatics.
APRIL 17
• 1912 – Russian troops open fire on striking goldfield workers in northeast Siberia, killing at least 150. • 1941 – Germany conquers Yugoslavia. • 1975: Khmer Rouge forces take over Cambodia. About 1.7 million people are slaughtered by this tyrannical regime, most dumped in the infamous mass graves known as The Killing Fields. • 2006 – Sami Hammad, a Palestinian suicide bomber, detonates an explosive device in Tel Aviv, killing 11 people and injuring 70.
MASSIVE earthquake laid waste to San Fransico.
APRIL 18
*1880 — A powerful tornado rips through Marshfield, Missouri, leaving 99 people dead and 100 injured. • 1897 – The Greco-Turkish War is declared between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. About 8,000 die in the brief but bloody conflict also known as The 30 Day War. • 1902 – Quetzaltenango, the second largest city of Guatemala, is destroyed by an earthquake, killing about 900 people. • 1906 – San Francisco earthquake destroys much of city. Death toll of 700 is often cited but experts believe as many as 2,800 may have perished in quake and resulting fires. *1942 – U.S. planes bomb Tokyo in the Doolittle Raid as revenge for Pearl Harbor, killing 50. All the aircraft are shot down and 11 crewmen are killed or captured. After Chinese civilians help other aviators escape, Japanese massacre 250,000 of them retaliation. • 1983 – A suicide bomber destroys the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, murdering 63 people. • 1996 – Israeli army shells the U.N. compound at Quana, Lebanon, blowing to smithereens at least 100 civilian refugees who’d taken refuge there. • 2007 – A series of bombings wreak havoc in Baghdad, killing 198 and injuring 251.
UP IN FLAMES: The seige of a cult compound in Waco, Texas, ended in tragedy.
APRIL 19
• 1943 – German troops crush the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. An estimated 13,000 Jews are killed, about half of those burned alive or killed by smoke inhalation. Of the 50,000 survivors, most are shipped to extermination camps. • 1943 – Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann deliberately takes LSD for the first time, introducing the drug that will destroy thousands of minds. • 1961 – The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ends in a fiasco for the U.S., in which most of the 1,500 C.I.A.-trained invaders are captured or killed. • 1989 – A gun turret explodes aboard the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors. • 1993 – The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die, including 20 children and two pregnant women. • 1993 – South Dakota governor George Mickelson and seven others are killed when their plane crashes in Iowa. • 1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: Timothy McVeigh blows up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168. • 1997 – The Red River Flood of 1997 overwhelms region from North Dakota to Minnesota, inflicting $3.5 billion in damage.
EVIL punks massacred classmates in cafeteria of Columbine High School.
APRIL 20
• 1792 – France declares war on Austria, the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars in which tens of thousands die. • 1889 – Nazi madman Adolf Hitler is born. He launches World War 2 in which over 60 million people are killed. * 1914 – In the heat of a Colorado miners’ strike, coal company goons and the Colorado National Guard gun down nearly two dozen people including 11 innocent children in the Ludlow Massacre. • 1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold fatally shoot 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide in Jefferson County, Colorado. • 2010 – The Deepwater Horizon oil well explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing twelve workers and causing the BP oil spill which lasts six months.
ON A HAPPIER NOTE:
If you found this article by C. Michael Forsyth interesting, check out his novels including Houdini Vs. Rasputin.
Surprise! Most real-life zombies subsist on a diet of berries and nuts, researchers now say – a far cry from Hollywood’s depiction of them as fierce cannibals.
“Zombies are what anthropologists call gatherers,” explains Dr. Henry Coblinsaw, chief author of a recently published study. “Their digestive system has atrophied, making it very difficult to digest meat. And because of their familiar shambling gait, chasing game such as deer or stray dogs is not an option, likewise humans, of course.”
Climbing trees is also impossible, so only low-hanging fruit is on the menu. Wild berries and nuts that have fallen to the ground are a zombie’s most commonly consumed food source.
“An Arizona zombie that was dissected in 2018 was found to have six walnuts in its stomach,” the expert reveals.
“No thanks. Have any walnuts?” Real zombies do not eat rats, contrary to this scene in The Walking Dead.
In movies like Night of the Living Dead and the hit TV series The Walking Dead, zombies are shown ripping ordinary people apart and feeding on their body parts. But with slowly decaying muscles and low levels of adrenaline, real zombies simply don’t have the strength or energy to do that. According to the researcher, there have been only eight cases of zombies eating human flesh since 1905.
Brain damage due to the loss of oxygen between death and revival is another factor that explains their dietary restrictions.
“Zombies are quite docile, which is what made them such easily controlled fieldworkers in Haiti from the 1700s up until the 1930s,” notes Dr. Coblinsaw. “They rely on the most primitive instincts residing in the surviving areas of the brain. That means eating fruit, nuts and berries like our tree-dwelling ape-like ancestors.”
The only real hazard zombies present to normal people is when a herd ambles through a strawberry patch, field of corn or other crops.
“They are a real pest to farmers,” says the researcher. “They pass through a cornfield, stripping the stalks bare like locusts. The only solution farmers have found is to post ‘scarecrows,’ cardboard cutouts of figures with chainsaws or cricket bats.”
CARDBOARD cutouts like this one in an Iowa cornfield are used to ward off zombies and protect crops.
If you enjoyed this whimsical story by fiction writer C. Michael Forsyth, check out his upcoming project:
Vampires take over a women’s prison in this graphic novel. A Kickstarter is underway right now!
CLAUSTROPHIC TERROR GETS THE MAX
If you got a chuckle out of this mind-bending tale by fiction writer C. Michael Forsyth, check out his new graphic novel Night Cage, about vampires running amok in a women’s prison.
If you enjoyed this mind-bending story by C. Michael Forsyth, check out his collection of bizarre news, available on Kindle and in other eBook formats.
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This story was written by the author of the acclaimed horror novel Hour of the Beast. Check it out along with his other exciting books HERE.
In Hour of the Beast, a young bride is raped by a werewolf on her wedding night. When her sons grow up and head to college, things REALLY get out of hand.
AMHERST, Mass. — Bubbly college cheerleaders are living symbols of squeaky-clean purity. But shockingly, 1 in 7 of the baton-twirling beauties are willing tools of Satan, according to a leading expert in the occult.
“These young women sell their souls for beauty and popularity,” declares Bob Sertesko, a Massachusetts-based cult-watcher. “The price is that they must use their enthusiastic chants and gymnastic feats to draw crowds over to the dark side.”
Sertesko reached his alarming conclusion after spending 4 ½ years carefully observing cheerleaders at scores of college football and basketball games.
“I recorded their chants and played them backward — and words cropped up that would make your hair stand on end,” he reveals. “There are prayers to Babylonian demons, as well as phrases in English such as ‘Bow down before your lord and master Lucifer,’” the researcher says.
Typically, the perky, pom-pom-shaking pawns of Satan become increasingly brazen over the course of the school year, as they successfully recruit more and more sports fans.
Claims the expert, “At one football game I attended, the cheerleaders openly chanted, ‘Satan, Satan, he’s our man, you can’t stop him, no one can. Give me an S, give me an A, give me a T, give me an A, give me an N … Satan!’”
The Hell-bound hotties choreograph their routines to brainwash unsuspecting onlookers.
RAUNCHY routines like these are designed to corrupt the souls of male sports fans, according to researcher.
“I have accumulated a vast collection of video footage of cheerleaders flaunting their bodies in a lascivious manner designed to corrupt the male mind,” Sertesko notes. “On rare occasions, they perform tricks only possible with supernatural aid, such as rotating the upper torso 360 degrees at the waist.”
Satan’s cheerleaders commonly use their formations to create sinister symbols such as the pentagram, an ancient symbol of black magic, according to the researcher. Frighteningly, the Evil One has even made inroads into cheerleading squads at the nation’s most prestigious Christian college.
“At one game, 16 cheerleaders faced me forming a cross,” the expert says. “So far, so good, but when I went to the opposite side of the field, I saw that from that angle, their bodies then formed an UPSIDE DOWN cross – an age-old Satanic symbol.”
Young women who accept Satan as their savior reap considerable rewards. A girl who was homely in high school may suddenly experience a drastic improvement in her appearance.
“Acne clears up; tubby girls develop the trim figures of supermodels; mousy brown hair turns radiantly blond,” explains the researcher. “I’ve spent literally hundreds of man hours scrutinizing the video footage. It shows how girls who were previously flat as an ironing board sprout busts that would make Jayne Mansfield green with envy, and high, taut rear ends.”
Cheerleaders who are in league with the Devil are among the most popular on campus – in part due to the fact that they have sex with practically everyone.
“They are like succubae who wantonly seduce male students and professors – and even lure innocent coeds into their sexual snare,” the researcher warns.
Fledgling cheerleaders are initiated into a Satanic coven in a macabre ceremony involving nudity, candles and the sacrifice of live chickens.
“The cheerleaders vow allegiance to Lucifer,” says Sertesko. “It is a choice they will come to regret when they find themselves suffering eternal damnation in the bowels of Hell.”
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
CLAUSTROPHIC TERROR GETS THE MAX
If you got a chuckle out of this mind-bending tale by fiction writer C. Michael Forsyth, check out his graphic novel Night Cage, about vampires running amok in a women’s prison.
If you enjoyed this story by fiction writer C. Michael Forsyth, you might enjoy his novel Hour of the Beast.
In Hour of the Beast, a young bride is raped by a werewolf on her wedding night. When her sons grow up and head to college, things REALLY get out of hand.
“Colon Expansion,” formerly known as The Judas Cradle, has been used by practitioners of enhanced interrogation techniques since the Middle Ages.
By C. Michael Forsyth
Chiefs of secret police forces worldwide are taking a page from Dick Cheney’s book and renaming torture techniques to sound like spa services — to ensure they can never be charged with war crimes.
Chinese Water Torture, for example, is now called Asian Aquatic Relaxation.
“According to the latest thinking in international law, if an interrogation technique sounds like a spa treatment, it’s not technically a war crime,” explained Hosni El-Shabiz, director of Syria’s Bureau of Information Extraction.
Cheney and CIA underlings dubbed enema torture “rectal hydration,” he noted.
Other name changes secret police forces have adopted:
* The Rack is now “Enhanced Spinal Decompression.”
* Bamboo shoots under the fingernails has been replaced by the more benign “Organic Subungual Therapy.”
* Cattle prod to the genitals is now known as “Intimate Area Stimulation.”
* The Iron Maiden has been switched to the friendlier “Deep Tissue Penetration.”
The names can be misleading to prisoners.
“Sometimes when you order a detainee to undress for a Dermal Abrasion session, they do it happily because they think it’s a soothing spa treatment,” El-Shabiz chuckled. “They’re usually quite taken aback when they discover that it means whipping with a cat o’ nine tails!”
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
If you appreciated the black humor of this story, you might enjoy the irony in his latest thriller The Identity Thief.
The tables turn on an identity thief in fast-paced thriller by C. Michael Forsyth.
QUICK AND THE UNDEAD: Zombie known only as Jacques is the fastest ever recorded.
By C. Michael Forsyth
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — There are slow zombies. There are fast zombies. And then there is a blindingly fast zombie named Jacques who recently shattered the world record for his kind by running the 100 meters in 10:06 seconds!
The lean, French-born athlete pulled off the dazzling feat at the annual Undead Track and Field Tournament held in the Toussaint L’Ouverture Racetrack in Haiti, finishing many strides ahead of his eight competitors.
“Jacques’ astounding performance at this event demolishes the image of zombies as shambling and unfocused,” declared sportswriter Kevin J. Bracksley. “His speed was just a fraction of a second behind the ‘normal human’ record set by Usain Bolt in 2009.”
The remarkable “running dead” sports star is equally impressive in longer distances, recently clocked at 4.12 minutes in the mile.
Zombie racing is a tradition that dates back to the 18th century, when plantation owners would wager on their most fleet-footed undead field hands. Mark Twain, who saw one of the bizarre races on his many travels, wrote in 1896 that it was “sort of like a tortoise race, but less exciting.”
In the 20th century, the international tournament was expanded to include events such as the shot put and broad jump. Organizers hope that in future years, other athletic events such as beach volleyball will be added.
Zombies arrived from far away as Turkey to compete in the races held on November 14, brought by family members or handlers who’d purchased them. Jacques’ owner is a wealthy, unidentified British sports enthusiast whose team spent months training and conditioning the 6 foot 2, 160-pound athlete.
“Muscle break down and decay is very common among zombies and the lack of oxygen to the brain they suffer before revival usually means their motor control is shot,” explained Bracksley. “That’s a huge hurdle to overcome in competitive sports.”
Although Jacques’ full name has not been revealed, he reportedly was an avid marathon runner who took home several trophies in Europe before falling victim to a zombie outbreak in 2011. That background has doubtless aided the rotting runner, the sportswriter said.
“There’s such a thing as ‘muscle memory’ you don’t lose even when the higher centers of the brain are kaput,” he observed. “And I’d like to think that the competitive spirit that Jacques had before he crossed over is still flickering in that decaying skull of his, and that helped him across the finish line first.”
If you got a chuckle out of this mind-bending tale by fiction writer C. Michael Forsyth, check out his new graphic novel Night Cage, about vampires running amok in a women’s prison.
If you enjoyed this mind-bending story by C. Michael Forsyth, check out his collection of wild supernatural news, available on Kindle and in other eBook formats.
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If you found this story by C. Michael Forsyth entertaining, check out his novel Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Harry Houdini in the Adventure of The Spook House HERE.
The creator of Sherlock Holmes and the world’s greatest magician probe a paranormal mystery in new thriller.
The graphic novel Severed was written by Scott Snyder and Scott Tuff, illustrated by Attila Futaki.
Severed is a viscerally scary graphic novel. Set in 1916, it is the tale of 12-year-old Jack Garron, who runs away from the home of his adopted mother with one dream: to find his father, a wandering guitar player. Instead he finds a nightmare: A serial killer with razor-sharp teeth who preys on children.
It’s hard to make comic books genuinely frightening. They lack the immediacy and realism of movies. They also can’t get into your head the way prose novels can, turning your own imagination into a fear factory.
What makes Severed so chilling is its realism; its unnerving depiction of a harsh early 20th century America where poor children were rarely truly safe. In that way, it’s reminiscent of the eerie movie classic, Night of the Hunter. No child protective services. No “safety net.” No food stamps. No Amber alerts. Even before Jack faces the monstrous maniac, he is exposed to dangers such as railroad hobos who try to molest him. A roving predator who feeds on the dreams – and flesh – of the innocent is made entirely believable. The grisly saga unfolds with inexorable logic.
A cannibal madman with teeth filed to points roams America preying on the innocent.
While 30 Days of Night employed an expressionistic style to convey a sense of the supernatural, the artwork here is naturalistic, in keeping with the text. The layout
is highly cinematic, the framing so akin to movie camera angles that the pages look a lot like storyboards. In fact Severed would make a terrific film, though an extraordinarily dark and nasty one.
In the “good old days” there was no shortage of predators of all types.
Vampires run amok in a women’s prison in the gorgeously illustrated, 80-page graphic novel Night Cage. When a newly made vampire is sentenced to an escape-proof, underground slammer, she quickly begins to spread the contagion.
The tables turn on an identity thief in the latest thriller by C. Michael Forsyth.
This review was written by the author of the new thriller The Identity Thief.
Teens’ poor choice of a vacation spot proves deadly in horror flick.
By C. Michael Forsyth
I’ve long been intrigued by the tragedy of The Donner Party, pioneers who set out for California in the winter of 1846, became stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive.
News of the grisly events captivated the nation. The California Star reported, “A more shocking scene cannot be imagined than that witnessed by the party of men who went to the relief of the unfortunate emigrants. The bones of those who had died and been devoured by the miserable ones that still survived were lying around their tents and cabins. Bodies of men, women and children, with half the flesh torn from them, lay on every side. A woman sat by the body of her husband, who had just died, eating out his tongue; the heart she had already taken out, broiled, and ate! The daughter was seen eating the flesh of the father; the mother that of her children.”
Donner Party members James and Margaret Reed faced a terrible choice when stranded in the mountains.
The movie Donner Pass takes that already-horrifying tale and adds an extra ingredient to the stew: As a result of eating human flesh, the wagon train’s leader George Donner becomes a wendigo, endowed with unnatural strength and longevity—as well as an insatiable hunger for man meat. When a group of present-day teens pay a visit to a cabin in the cursed mountain pass, they soon find themselves on the menu.
The first scene set in modern times is less than promising. Four teens of quickly identifiable types drive toward the cabin, while one recounts an urban legend that Donner still haunts the woods. The story-teller cavalierly jettisons the well-known facts of the tragedy. In his version, Donner was the sole survivor, while in actuality 48 of the 87 members of the party lived. Par for the course, the kids are not deterred by talk of Donner’s ongoing snack attacks nor is their enthusiasm dampened by news that a woman’s half-eaten corpse was recently found, apparently the victim of a homicidal maniac.
KILLER, SHMILLER: The fact that there’s a cannibal killer on the loose doesn’t keep Valerie The Whore (Krystal Davis) from a topless dip in the hot tub.
After Joss Whedon so brilliantly dissected the hackneyed remote-cabin scenario in Cabin in the Woods, it’s hard not to groan at another stab at it. However, the movie turns out to be well-executed, with some imaginative twists—and more than one of the characters is nursing a surprising secret. Yes, of course the archetypes Whedon pinpointed are back: The Good Girl, the Whore, the Jock, the Nerd, etc. And the characters die in exactly the order you’d anticipate. (Don’t expect the amorous couple who get busy in the hot tub to make it to the prom). But the interplay between the characters is engaging, particularly when they turn against each other as the situation grows more desperate. Although most of the plot turns are telegraphed five or ten minutes ahead, they are well thought out—and you many not actually see the final twist coming.
TRUST NO ONE: The Bitch AKA Nicole (Adelaide Kane) may have a hidden agenda.
This isn’t the first time Hollywood has sunk its teeth into the myth of the wendigo, which is rooted in Algonquin Indian folklore. The movie Ravenous (1999) also featured a vampiric cannibal spawned by a Donner-Party-type catastrophe, and the intrepid brothers in TV’s Supernatural did battle with one.
Interestingly enough, psychologists have identified a real version of the phenomenon, just as there is for lycanthropy. “Wendigo Psychosis refers to a condition in which sufferers developed an insatiable desire to eat human flesh even when other food sources were readily available, often as a result of prior famine cannibalism,” according to Wikipedia.
I think one reason the Donner Party tragedy so profoundly affected the mind of the public is that it exposed an ugliness in Manifest Destiny and our winning of the West. Just as the sinking of the Titanic later put a damper on the Gilded Age, the Manson family murders revealed the dark side to carefree hippie movement of the 1960s and the Challenger disaster knocked the wind out of America’s triumphant space program.
PARTY ANIMALS: Georgia Donner, Eliza Donner and Mary Brunner survived the Donner Party tragedy–by resorting to the unthinkable.
And perhaps it lingers in our imagination more than a century and a half later because of the awful choice it presented. Would you resort to cannibalism to survive? Drawing straws and dining on the unlucky loser may seem morally defensible in an extreme famine. What would Jesus do? Hard to imagine Him nibbling on the calves of St. Peter. Still, He did say, “Eat of my flesh,” at the Last Supper, so He might be forgiving of cannibals. Anyhow, not much of a worry for a fellow who can mass produce fish and loaves of bread at will. But I digress. Chew the question over, then answer the poll below:
Beloved figure from America’s tall tales has a mean streak in horror flick.
By C. Michael Forsyth
The title of Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan is so spit-out-your-drink funny that when I heard about it, I couldn’t wait to watch what sounded like a horror movie so bad it’s good. Sure enough, the opening scene, set in a logging camp in 1846, is one of the worst ever committed to celluloid. The costumes wouldn’t pass muster in a porn film. Bunyan, attacking the loggers, shows up in what looks like a Halloween mask from a Wal-Mart discount bin and he’s conspicuously smaller than Dan Haggerty as the foreman. Haggerty doesn’t exactly add gravitas to the film. You’re only surprised that he’s still alive and that the dough he raked in from the 1972-74 TV series The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams took so long to run out, he wasn’t forced to resort to a grade Z flick like this before.
But hang on–this is no hatchet job. Despite the 2-star rating it roundly received, the movie turns out to have some good thrills, a dose of humor and enough gore to please any horror fan. I’d categorize it as a guilty pleasure rather than the heap of amateurish garbage the first scene suggests.
UNLUCKY hiker finds out the hard way that Paul Bunyan really exists.
More than a century and a half after Bunyan’s bloody rampage, a group of young first-time criminal offenders are escorted into the woods as part of a boot camp. When they make the mistake of messing with the bones of Bunyan’s beloved Babe the Blue Ox, the 20-foot lumberjack takes his revenge. He’s not, as it turns out, the cheerful, gentle giant of America’s tall tales, but a dimwitted, deformed, troll-like monster. If you’ve seen your share of horror flicks, you won’t have trouble sorting out which of the youths will die and in what order. You’ve got your slut, your athletic guy, the black nerd, the virgin, etc. But the parts are quite well played and Thomas Downey is hilarious as the over-the-top-tough Sgt. Hokes, the corrections officer in charge of the ill-fated party.
“WHAT, ME WORRY?” Slutty Trish (Jill Evyn) has her next date with the business end of Bunyan’s axe.
The monster effects, though hardly state of the art, are effective, whisking me back to those delightfully scary, unreal-yet-real Ray Harryhausen stop-motion creatures I saw as a kid.
The goofy premise of the movie got me wondering about what other American folklore heroes could be rebooted as horror movie villains. John Henry swung a mean sledgehammer and his spirit has plenty of cause to be angry at greedy railroad magnates. I can see him as a Candyman-type, vengeful wraith wreaking havoc on passengers trapped on a runaway train. “BEWARE OF JOHN HENRY: He doesn’t like trains. He doesn’t like trains at all.” Or Johnny Appleseed protecting his groves by any means necessary. The tagline: “Don’t Mess with His Apples.”
ALSO FROM THE AUTHOR OF THIS REVIEW:
Houdini and Conan Doyle investigate a bizarre disappearance in new book.
DAY OF TERROR: Cowardly fanatics unleashed death and mayhem at the Boston Marathon last April.
Spirit of Bostonians could not be broken as many heroes showed by rushing to the aid of the injured.
By C. Michael Forsyth
Brace yourself! The Week From Hell has rolled around again: Nine days that have been plagued by disaster and tragedy over the course of many centuries. Last year on April 15, 2013, the Boston Marathon was cut short when two pressure-cooker bombs exploded killing three people and injuring an estimated 264 others. But that was only the latest in a string of heartbreaking catastrophes. Here are just a few of the past tragedies that have befallen the world between April 12 and April 20:
April 12: U.S. Civil War begins
April 13: Apollo 13 disaster
April 14: Lincoln Shot
April 15: Titanic Sinks
April 16: Virginia Tech Massacre
April 17: Russian troops slaughter gold mine workers
April 18: San Francisco Earthquake
April 19: Oklahoma City Bombing, Bay of Pigs, Waco tragedy.
April 20: Columbine High School Massacre
Until last year I treated this with a certain amount of gallows humor. Now I’m just praying that people around the world are spared from harm–while my family and I take shelter till the disaster-prone time frame blows over. The Titanic and the other incidents above are just the “tip of the iceberg.” Here, drawn mostly from Wikipedia, is the full list:
BROTHER vs. BROTHER: The Civil War ripped America in two.
APRIL 12
• 1861 – The U.S. Civil War begins when Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
• 1864 –The Fort Pillow massacre: Confederate forces murder most of the African American soldiers who surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.
• 1945 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office.
• 1968 – Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah.
• 1970 – Soviet submarine K-8, carrying four nuclear torpedoes, sinks in the Bay of Biscay four days after a fire on board.
• 2002 – A female suicide bomber blows herself up at the entrance to Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market, killing 7 and wounding 104.
• 2007 – A suicide bomber penetrates the Green Zone and detonates in a cafeteria inside the parliament building, killing Iraqi MP Mohammed Awad and wounding more than 20 other people.
• 2010 – A train derails near Merano, Italy, after running into a landslide, causing nine deaths and injuring 28 people.
UNLUCKY NUMBER: Astronaut James Lovell was lost in space aboard Apollo 13.
APRIL 13
• 1945 – German troops butcher more than 1,000 political and military prisoners in Gardelegen, Germany.
• 1948 – The Hadassah medical convoy massacre: In an ambush, 79 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital and a British soldier are slaughtered by Arabs in Sheikh Jarra near Jerusalem.
• 1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the sinister mind-control program MKULTRA.
• 1970 – An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes while en route to the Moon, stranding the crew in space.
• 1975 – Bus massacre in Lebanon: Attack by the Phalangist resistance kills 26 militia members of the P.F.L. of Palestine, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War.
• 1992 – The Great Chicago Flood. Damaged wall of a utility tunnel beneath the Chicago River opens into a breach that floods basements with an estimated 250 million gallons of water.
ASSASSIN John Wilkes Booth ruins the Lincolns’ night at the theater.
APRIL 14
* 1846 – The Donner Party expedition sets out from Springfield, Illinois for California. After being trapped by heavy snow, nearly half of the 87 pioneers die, many eaten by their starving companions.
* 1865 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.
• 1909 – Adana Massacre is launched by Turkey’s Ottoman Empire against Armenian civilians. Between 15,000–30,000 people are killed.
• 1944 – A massive explosion in India’s Bombay harbor kills 800.
• 1986 – President Ronald Reagan orders major bombing raids against Libya, killing 60 people including an infant girl, reportedly Colonel Gaddafi’s daughter.
• 1986 – Massive 2.2 pound hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.
• 1988 – The USS Samuel B. Roberts strikes a mine in the Persian Gulf.
• 1994 – In northern Iraq, two U.S. Air Force fighters mistakenly shoot down two U.S. Army helicopters, killing 26 people.
• 1999 – NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees. Yugoslav officials say 75 people are killed.
• 1999 – A severe hailstorm strikes Sydney, Australia causing $2.3 billion in insured damages, the most costly natural disaster in Australian history.
• 2010 – Nearly 2,700 are killed in a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai, China.
NEARER MY GOD TO THEE: A century after the disaster, the sinking of the Titantic remains a night to remember.
APRIL 15
• 1715 – The Pocotaligo Massacre triggers the start of the Yamasee War in colonial South Carolina. In the first year of the war, the Yamasee Indians lose about a quarter of their population, either killed or enslaved.
• 1912 – The RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two and a half hours after hitting an iceberg. 1,517 people are killed.
• 1941 – In the Belfast Blitz, the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) bombs Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing 1,000 people.
• 1969 – North Korea shoots down a United States Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board.
• 1970 – During the Cambodian Civil War, massacres of the Vietnamese minority results in 800 bodies flowing down the Mekong River into South Vietnam.
• 1979 – A disastrous 7.1 earthquake occurs on Montenegro coast.
• 1989 – British soccer fans crush together at Liverpool’s Hillsborough Stadium in the FA Cup Semi Final, causing 96 deaths.
• 1989 – The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in the People’s Republic of China. Thousands are massacred by Communist troops.
• 2002 – Air China Flight CA129 crashes into a hillside during heavy rain and fog near Busan, South Korea, killing 128.
* 2013 — An estimated 264 runners and spectators are injured and 3 are killed when a pair of young terrorists detonate bombs at the Boston Marathon.
CRAZED student went on killing spree at Virginia Tech.
APRIL 16
• 73 A.D. – Roman legions crush the Jewish revolt at Masada after months of seige. Hundreds of Israelites commit suicide rather than be taken as slaves.
• 1945 – About 7,000 civilians and wounded soldiers perish when the German refugee ship Goya is sunk by a Soviet submarine torpedo, marking one of the worst tragedies in maritime history.
• 1947 – Texas City Disaster: An explosion on board a freighter in port causes the city of Texas City, Texas, to catch fire, killing almost 600.
• 1990 – “Doctor Death” Jack Kevorkian carries out his first assisted suicide.
• 1992 – The Katina P. runs aground off of Maputo, Mozambique and 60,000 tons of crude oil spill into the ocean.
• 2007 – Virginia Tech massacre: The deadliest spree killing in modern American history. Seung-Hui Cho kills 32 and injures 23 before committing suicide.
THE KILLING FIELDS: Millions were slaughtered by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge fanatics.
APRIL 17
• 1912 – Russian troops open fire on striking goldfield workers in northeast Siberia, killing at least 150.
• 1941 – Germany conquers Yugoslavia.
• 1975: Khmer Rouge forces take over Cambodia. About 1.7 million people are slaughtered by this tyrannical regime, most dumped in the infamous mass graves known as The Killing Fields.
• 2006 – Sami Hammad, a Palestinian suicide bomber, detonates an explosive device in Tel Aviv, killing 11 people and injuring 70.
MASSIVE earthquake laid waste to San Fransico.
APRIL 18
*1880 — A powerful tornado rips through Marshfield, Missouri, leaving 99 people dead and 100 injured.
• 1897 – The Greco-Turkish War is declared between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. About 8,000 die in the brief but bloody conflict also known as The 30 Day War.
• 1902 – Quetzaltenango, the second largest city of Guatemala, is destroyed by an earthquake, killing about 900 people.
• 1906 – San Francisco earthquake destroys much of city. Death toll of 700 is often cited but experts believe as many as 2,800 may have perished in quake and resulting fires.
*1942 – U.S. planes bomb Tokyo in the Doolittle Raid as revenge for Pearl Harbor, killing 50. All the aircraft are shot down and 11 crewmen are killed or captured. After Chinese civilians help other aviators escape, Japanese massacre 250,000 of them retaliation.
• 1983 – A suicide bomber destroys the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, murdering 63 people.
• 1996 – Israeli army shells the U.N. compound at Quana, Lebanon, blowing to smithereens at least 100 civilian refugees who’d taken refuge there.
• 2007 – A series of bombings wreak havoc in Baghdad, killing 198 and injuring 251.
UP IN FLAMES: The seige of a cult compound in Waco, Texas, ended in tragedy.
APRIL 19
• 1943 – German troops crush the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. An estimated 13,000 Jews are killed, about half of those burned alive or killed by smoke inhalation. Of the 50,000 survivors, most are shipped to extermination camps.
• 1943 – Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann deliberately takes LSD for the first time, introducing the drug that will destroy thousands of minds.
• 1961 – The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ends in a fiasco for the U.S., in which most of the 1,500 C.I.A.-trained invaders are captured or killed.
• 1989 – A gun turret explodes aboard the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.
• 1993 – The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die, including 20 children and two pregnant women.
• 1993 – South Dakota governor George Mickelson and seven others are killed when their plane crashes in Iowa.
• 1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: Timothy McVeigh blows up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168.
• 1997 – The Red River Flood of 1997 overwhelms region from North Dakota to Minnesota, inflicting $3.5 billion in damage.
EVIL punks massacred classmates in cafeteria of Columbine High School.
APRIL 20
• 1792 – France declares war on Austria, the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars in which tens of thousands die.
• 1889 – Nazi madman Adolf Hitler is born. He launches World War 2 in which over 60 million people are killed.
* 1914 – In the heat of a Colorado miners’ strike, coal company goons and the Colorado National Guard gun down nearly two dozen people including 11 innocent children in the Ludlow Massacre.
• 1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold fatally shoot 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide in Jefferson County, Colorado.
• 2010 – The Deepwater Horizon oil well explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing twelve workers and causing the BP oil spill which lasts six months.
ON A HAPPIER NOTE:
The book trailer for my novel The Blood of Titans if finally complete and up on YouTube.
The author of this article also wrote The Blood of Titans, a story of love and adventure set in the golden age of Africa, available on Amazon.com and Smashwords.
DEAD RINGER for Ark found frozen in Antarctic ice 3 years ago.
By C. Michael Forsyth
CANBERRA, Australia–Just 30 kilometers from the spot where the mysterious wooden vessel dubbed “Noah’s Ark 2” was found frozen in Antarctic ice in 2011, researchers have detected low levels of radiation emanating from what could be a hole in the wall between our universe and a parallel one!
The discovery bolsters the theory that the Ark-like ship—which was found with the entire crew and all the animals frozen stiff—somehow floated into our world from one of many others in a “multiverse.”
The faint signal was picked up on January 3 by scientists aboard the Australian icebreaker the Ned Kelly, one of several that were racing to rescue the stranded Russian research ship the Akademik Shokalski, which was stuck in ice. The scientist turned over the puzzling data over to university physicists who analyzed it with the aid of computers.
“The radiation is closely related to terminal gamma ray flashes from an evaporating black hole,” revealed physicist Dr. Peter Jolloway. “It is something you’d expect to detect in deep space—not 450 feet below the ice on Earth. This is absolutely stunning. You either have to believe that there is or was a black hole in Antarctica or you have to accept the possibility that there is a breach in the wall separating our universe from a sister universe.”
The Ark, which closely matches biblical descriptions found in the book of Genesis, was found in the Wendell Sea after a section of the Larsen C ice shelf collapsed. This earthshaking news was suppressed by numerous governments to avoid widespread social upheaval and both Bible scholars and scientists were baffled. It was Dr. Jeremy Blinkley who first proposed that the ark hailed from another universe, one in which both mankind and most non-aquatic animal species became extinct. Support for that theory arose last year when a study of the mitochondrial DNA of tissue extracted from animals aboard Noah’s Ark 2 revealed they all shared a mutation not found on any species on this version of Earth.
RUSSELL Crowe as Noah in the new hit movie.
At the time, Dr. Blinkley declared that the results made the discovery of the so-called God Particle “look like a second grade science project.” But the latest development makes that pale in significance, he now asserts.
“This suggests that at this unique location there is a permeable membrane between our universe and another among the infinite number in the multiverse,” the expert told a science reporter. “We may at some point in the future be able to send a probe through it or perhaps one day even a manned mission.”
If you enjoyed this mind-bending story by C. Michael Forsyth, check out his collection of bizarre news, available on Kindle and in other eBook formats.
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ALSO FROM THE WRITER OF THIS ARTICLE: The new thriller Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Harry Houdini in The Adventure of The Spook House. LISTEN to an excerpt free.
Houdini and Conan Doyle investigate a bizarre disappearance in new book.
C. Michael Forsyth is the author of "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Harry Houdini in The Adventure of the Spook House,""The Blood of Titans," "Hour of the Beast" and "The Identity Thief." He is a Yale graduate and former senior writer for The Weekly World News
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