What Lies Below, Day Fourteen
Wow, two weeks in! This one has an item that began in the very old internet, and I cannot stress enough how much more fun and interesting the old wild-west internet was. We have to go back to circa-2000 internet immediately.
SPIDERS CRAWL IN YOUR MOUTH AT NIGHT — They do! A lot of boring “scientists” will say this is a myth but they’re possibly working for the spiders.
MCKINEY MANOR — I think this means ‘McKamey Manor’. This isn’t the sole example of ‘extreme haunted houses’, but it’s probably the best known. It’s, at the core, just like any other ‘haunt’ thing you’d pay to go walk through at Halloween. The gimmick with this one is that you sign a giant waiver of dubious legality that lets the performers do basically anything they want to you. Usually, performers aren’t able to touch guests — but McKamey performers are not just allowed to touch guests, but hit them and detain them and torture them in various ways. There’s debate as to whether or not guests are given a ‘safe word’, with some saying there isn’t and some saying there is — but it is sometimes ignored. Some of the stories of it get pretty gross, and the general ‘haunt’ community doesn’t care much for it.
THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T HANG — John Babbacombe Lee was a British thief who was convicted of murder on fairly shaky grounds. They tried to hang him three times, but the trapdoor wouldn’t open despite being repeatedly tested and found to be working. Eventually the doctor on the scene forced them to stop and so they did, and he was later released. There’s books written about him!
NOTE: Okay, so the next bit is EITHER “Daniel” and “Douglas Home” as separate entities, or “Daniel Douglas Home” all as one thing but split between lines for some reason. I THINK it is the latter because I can’t begin to imagine what ‘Daniel’ would be, and the only thing that ‘Douglas Home’ would be would be “Alex Douglas-Home’, a former UK Prime Minister with some rumors but nothing spectacularly weird. So, moving on!
DANIEL DOUGLAS HOME — This is almost surely a misspelling of Daniel Dunglas Home, a Scottish guy from the late 1800s. He was either a gifted medium and psychic or just a clever showman who knew how to part Victorians with money. He earned a good bit of notoriety doing seances and allegedly levitating and carrying on various other feats, though he was apparently caught in the act of perpetrating this stuff fraudulently more than once.
ELDERS OF CARABANDAL — Guessing a misspelling of “Garabandal”. I’m also not super sure what the ‘elders’ part means? Anyway, in the 60s a group of schoolgirls were allegedly regularly visited by manifestations/visions/spirits/whatever of the Archangel Michael and Virgin Mary. Some of the messages were prophetic and some seemed a little concerning; they’re well documented. There’s lots of photos and even some video of the girls receiving these ‘visitations’.
VOODOO ECONOMY — lol this is what George Bush(the one who killed Kennedy, not the one who did 9/11) called Reagan’s economic plan during the 1980 GOP Primary. I don’t know if this is maybe used now to suggest that the economy is guided by magic or something, but calling Reagonimcs “voodoo” is a significant insult to voodoo.
NEW DELHI MONKEYMAN — A fairly recent(early 2000s) cryptid! More cryptids on this iceberg please!!! He was a small monkey man who was reported to be running around New Delhi scratching people and being a real hassle. Sometimes he wore what I can only assume was an adorable little suit! Unfortunately, this fella caused so much hysteria that people actually died via falling off things while running from presumed sightings. Haven’t heard from him since.
BILL GATES BOUGHT THE VATICAN — The old internet was a much better place than the new internet. In the 90s, people convinced a lot of media and normies that Bill Gates was about to buy the Catholic Church. It was mostly based on photoshops that weren’t even good, and was way more obviously fake than the average Onion article. Things were easier then. Nowadays a joke like this will create an entire Qanon splinter cult who will turn into violent maniacs overnight. I wonder if he misses being the object of theories like this instead of everyone saying he’s putting nano-robots and reptilian DNA in our babies with vaccines.
CAPITAL IS SENTIENT AI — This is just kind of congealed conjecture about how increasingly detached and imaginary most “money” seems to be. By and by, it just seems to be numbers moving around on screens with less and less basis in any tangible reality the average person sees — and the markets are so influenced by algorithms and things that sometimes you’ll see a *hits blunt* “what if its a robot” take. Pretty sure that this is another one you’ll hear Joe Rogan get paid $100000 an hour to listen to and say ‘whoah, wow’ about someday. Unfortunately, a lot of these folks are missing the forest for the trees here: it’s all confusing and alien because money isn’t real and capitalism is the boot the ruling class wears while stepping on your throat. AND THAT DOES IT FOR TIER TWO!
SALVADOR DALI SCATOLOGICAL MAGICK — Tier Three starting off hot! Definitely glad I committed to this, right now. Dali had some level of interest in the occult and metaphysics, and some people conjecture that he may have(either knowingly or unknowingly) worked a bit of magic at times. Yes, some subversives even believe you can use…sigh…your ass and your poo as sources of this. Dali was weird, who knows!
AXIOM23 — So this is a title of a book, and the book is put out by the “Autonomous Individuals Network”, which seems to be a sort of occult-themed online artist collective with a delightfully old-school website. They seem to have put out a hell of a lot of contact, and their social media presence still exists. Seems connected to ‘Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth’, which I imagine will pop up later in the iceberg.
SOVIET TIME TRAVEL — Well, one cosmonaut did pull this off for real in terms of time-dilation — i.e. he was up there long enough and going fast enough that he aged a little slower than we did, and over enough time this added up. I don’t really understand how that works but it is real! Otherwise I think it’s just chatter about Soviet experimentation and the like, you know.
BOGDANOFFS — A pair of brothers who are real into sci-fi and have done a lot of film/writing about it, as well as actual quantum science papers and stuff. Also they’ve collectively had dozens of cosmetic surgeries done to themselves over the years and uh, phew. You should look up a picture of them. Do it! Yeah, holy shit right? I’m going to post one here just in case you didn’t. People wonder a lot about them since they’re intelligent yet, uh, a bit odd.
Tier Two is done! Eighteen more to go! That’s a whole lot! This was not the wisest endeavor to obligate myself to! Oh no!
