The Witches: Salem, 1692 -- How A Society Can Go Mad, Then and Now

Photo: from google.com/books, at this address.

Incredibly thorough, this book seems somehow meticulous and yet all over the place at the same time. I mean that in a good way, though I could maybe understand those reviews I've read that appreciated that less than I did. I'm a guy whose thoughts are kinda all over the place anyway, yet I somehow manage to reel it all in and be very productive on most days (not lately, with a long-lasting sinus infection and head cold combination happening), and hopefully averagely productive on my worst.

This book is like that: it tells the whole Salem story, from every possible viewpoint, in a very omniscient POV that considers the victims, the accusers, the judges, the politicians who let it all happen, the social milieu, and the background history--often all in the same page or two. It never spins out of control, though a few times it may look like it's about to. It's written in a cyclone fashion, its winds reaching far, and like that storm it pulls it all together memorably.

And memorable this is. Its author, Stacy Schiff--a Pulitzer-Prize winner--clearly intended this to read like it does. It's almost Umberto Eco-like, except he really does spin out of control, especially after The Name of the Rose. And those who don't enjoy his ride will find his latest novels impossible to read. (I can read The Name of the Rose straight through, but it's mentally taxing, and his other books are just taxing, like James Joyce at his most internal.) Anyway, Schiff writes here in that whirlwind fashion, yet even the all-encompassing winds have everything under a microscope.

So though it's far-reaching, it's still concise and very readable. Its short asides or tangents exist to show the human side of the hysteria and tragedy. One passage, about a teenage girl, tracked down at her grandmother's house in another town, is chased by men with sticks and dogs. She gets away for awhile, but what must that have been like? Schiff offers the image, and imagines how it felt.

That's what I really took away from this. You get the facts, as you would expect to. You may know, for example, that Arthur Miller's The Crucible strayed a bit from the cold truth. John Proctor, for example, was not anything like Daniel Day-Lewis, even with bad teeth. In history, he was a plain-talking tavern owner in his 60s. He did not have a battle with his conscience; a great percentage of those who hanged did so pleading their ignorance for the entirety of their captivity. Those who "confessed" never saw jail time to begin with--except for one, who did hang anyway. That was George Burroughs, the town's former minister, and an extremely strong man who survived Indian massacres in Maine--and who was apparently despised for that, close and afar. His hanging is perhaps the book's, and Salem's, biggest mystery.

But you get the personal sides and the surrounding history. Indian attacks were common and a constant fear--to the point of hysteria. If that wasn't bad enough, you had catastrophic winters, rampant disease, socio-economic chasms (lots of homeless women and indentured servants, who were routinely raped and/or beaten), extreme gender bias (being an outspoken woman was not wise), a stifling belief system, and a theocracy that epitomizes the necessity for the Separation of Church and State that this country even now so often ignores and forgets.

You get it all. Because don't you want to understand why it happened? This is Nazism in a microcosm, right here in New England. In short, at first, if you were different, you were screwed. If you were a social undesirable, you were accused. Then, if you were in a position of economic power, like Rebecca Nurse and her family, you were accused. Predictably, it didn't stop until family members of the judges and politicians (especially Governor Phip's wife) were accused. How can Harvard-educated men, the wisest and the smartest in the country, take part in this, and allow it to happen? Well, here's how.

And it can happen again. Just take a town (or a country?) at social war with itself, and throw it a bone, and watch it all happen. There were dissenters, sure--until they were immediately accused and thrown in jail. That, predictably, shut them up real fast. The threat of that then quickly shut up potential dissenters, until finally nobody (besides a few untouchables in Boston, so close yet so far away) spoke up. It doesn't take much of an imagination to see this happening on a large scale.

Let's just hope it doesn't.

But here is how a community can go mad. And it's not from any one thing, but from a perfect storm of the worst elements of human nature: religious fundamentalism, ignorance, intolerance, e theocratic government, greed, jealousy, a male-dominated society, a conviction of belief over intelligence and common sense--even from the most educated men of their time. In a world where belief trumps knowledge (See what I did there?), where disinformation and misinformation is gospel, where belief in what you can't prove trumps what can be proven (I did it again.)--Well, how can disaster and chaos NOT happen?

A Bat in My Bathroom -- Musings by the Firepit 7.9.16

Photo: I would've taken a pic of the bat in my bathroom (yes), but I'd chickened out.

So I've been away for about three weeks from this blog. As I sit here, after musing by the firepit, I'll share partly why I've been away:

--A close family member passed, someone who was sort of a second father to me, especially after my real one passed. Wake and funeral, and I was honored to be a pallbearer, and then...well, I just didn't feel like doing much for awhile. I won't lie: I had the Poor-Me's. This made me feel even worse, and then I told myself to get over myself, and, well, it got ugly.

--I finally decided to update my cell, as I tired of everyone scoffing at it. So what if it was about 5-6 years old? It was the one I got to replace my flip-top! So I was eligible for a free upgrade, as you might imagine, which means (I told my better half) that I would be relieved of a couple hundred bucks, instead of more. I got the newest Samsung Galaxy, and a tablet, and I upgraded my cell phone account and my cable account, as I was paying a lot for things I wasn't using. I walked out of there with better contracts that cost me the same I'm paying now, but with more HD, a better box, and a free tablet. The phone wasn't exactly free, as I suspected, but would instead cost me much less than its $400 cost if I broke it down over infinite months, with a rebate, etc. But the newest stuff makes it worthwhile, especially the camera (you can judge by the pic above, as compared to all past pics on this blog) and the email access. And I'm not a tech guy, but boy the camera is much better and it's now so easy to delete emails at doctor offices and during commercials.

photo: from wildlife-removal.com, here. One of these guys was in my bathroom for about 12 hours.

--I got a bat in my house. I mean, the flying kind. You have not lived until you have seen a bat hanging upside-down from your bathroom window.

I was working on the same PC (yes, I know, why not the tablet? Or the phone? Or my Mac?) at about 1 a.m. when I heard something fluttering outside my office door, in the hallway. I knew immediately what it was. Unhappy. (I figure it came in when I walked inside from the upper deck after watching mucho fireworks up and down the bay and cove where I live.) It flew into my bathroom, and I shut the door. Then I called the Wildlife Emergency number I found on the internet. It said it was 24-hours, but I had to leave a message. They haven't called back yet, and it's been several days now. I then called a pest control company that handled bats (not all do). I said to the woman, "I have a bat in my bathroom." She said, "Oh, no! Say it isn't so!" I then left my contact numbers and my email and was told Fred would be there from 10-12 a.m. This was at about 11 p.m. I checked in my bathroom, with stealth. I didn't see it. I walked in. It flew out of my shower and I ran out and closed the door. I couldn't sleep until about 5 a.m. My better half got me up at 7 a.m. and I was wide awake. I peeked in again: it was hanging upside down from my Venetian blinds, exactly where I'd stand to do my #1 morning business, if you know what I'm sayin'. Good thing I saw it fluttering and didn't just walk in there at 7 a.m. the next morning like I normally would. I would slowly look to my right as I was draining, and I would get the shock of my life. And probably bitten. You would've heard me from wherever you live.

photo: from bat-house.net. This is the bathouse I have on a tree in my backyard. But, unlike this one, which you can see is on a telephone pole, bats don't want to go in mine. Apparently, they prefer my real house--specifically, my bathroom. See all those little guys in this one?!? Ewwww...

Anyway, I call the place back at 11:55, as Fred had not showed. I got transferred to five different people. The last one repeated back to me incorrect phone numbers for Fred to call me, and I admit to being upset. Surprisingly, Fred arrives. First thing out of his mouth: "So, what's the problem?" I said, "I have a bat in my bathroom." He turns pale and asks me if I'm serious. He'd shown up in a regular car, carrying a large screwdriver. (?) I said I was serious. He calls his supervisor, who must've said to hit me with the plans they offer. He'll get rid of the bat either way, but his boss correctly guessed that I'd be so freaked that I'd buy their biggest package of long-term care. Turns out, I did just that, to the tune of over $1,300. It involved a total concealment of my home and roof, except they couldn't put down screens on the roof until after August 1st, as it's against the law, because what if a mama bat lays eggs in my attic, but then she leaves from the screen and can't get back in and all the baby bats die in my attic? The baby bats are federally protected until the end of September. My attic and my sanity aren't. So these two guys came over the next day and laid down lots of traps, and heavy sticky things, and squirted black goo around my home's perimeter, and in the attic, and in the basement, and on my upper deck, though I reminded everyone that I think the damn thing had flown in when I opened the door. They told me that bats and mice need just a dime of space to get in. They spent about three hours here.

But I digress. Fred needed to get rid of the bat, and he was clearly unhappy about it. He kept calling his supervisor, in the hope, I think, that this man would come over and do it instead. Apparently his advice was for Fred to throw a towel over the thing and pummel it with the handle of the monsterous screwdriver. I posited that we could open the bathroom door. I would stand on the parlor stairs waving a broom so it wouldn't go down there, or I could tape a sheet to cover the stairs. I would have all the upstairs doors closed, except the one that led to the room that led to the door that opened up to the deck, where I think the damn thing entered to begin with. We would essentially just chase it out that way. He called his supervisor back. This man again suggested a towel and some pummeling. I asked Fred if he'd ever done this before, at all, and he said No. I also asked him why he hadn't been told that I had a bat in my bathroom, as I'd mentioned that several dozens of times, and I wasn't happy with the wrong contact numbers, either, which I had also mentioned a ton of times. "Yeah, our home office sucks," he said. (I'd already written the check.) He took a picture of the hanging bat and texted it and emailed it to his supervisor, who said he'd never received them when Fred called him maybe twenty minutes later. I almost asked him to email me the pic for this blog, but I didn't feel that was proper, and I can't for the life of me tell you why.

By this time we'd been having a long conversation in my bathroom, with the door open, standing next to my sleeping guest on my window blinds, because Fred correctly surmised that the bat wouldn't care and it was sleeping and it wasn't going anywhere. It was disconcerting to see how still and quiet these things are. I also wasn't happy that Fred said he suspected I had an attic full of the things, and that that's where this one came from, and that he'd climbed down a central air tube, or something. (It is true that I had a TON of mice poop in the attic and basement when I got here five years ago, and I wouldn't be surprised if there in fact had been bats in this belfry.) When I said I hadn't heard anything flying in there in five years, he pointed to our pleasantly sleeping friend. "You wouldn't," he said. This was unnerving, and I've been a little skeeved since. The two guys who visited the next day disagreed with this diagnosis; they said there hadn't been any new activity in my attic in some time. They were in there for over half an hour, shining their lights everywhere, and one was amazed at how much space there was amongst the eaves, and above the doors. This space goes all the way back to the end of the house, where there's no other access panel. Nobody volunteered to go all the way in. But they also spent over half an hour in the basement and in the crawlspace between the basement and the garage. And they did black poo the entire perimeter of the house, which is quite a bit.

Finally, after fiddling and farting around for over an hour and a half because he (understandably) didn't want to deal with the thing, he finally decided that he'd take two of these hand-sized black sticky things from his car--which is all he came armed with, and is apparently all he places; he's the salesman, I'm guessing--and get the bat out with those. He came back in the house with them, and took maybe fifteen minutes to climb the five steps to my bathroom. We conversed more outside the bathroom door; we'd become veritable pals by now. Finally he took each one in hand, holding them like EMTs hold the paddles before they shock the dead guy, and we paused again. He took a deep breath and slowly closed the bathroom door. (His company's insurance dictated that the customer could not be in any danger, so I couldn't go in, which was fine with me. Plus, I put myself in charge of being the one to open the bathroom door and the front door--fast!--if necessary.) Before this, I'd armed him with a plastic eye protector, and he'd found some really thick gloves in his car. I'd let my dog out in the back, in case things went bad and it flew away from us, so that my dog would be the only one without rabies.

So I stood outside the bathroom door, listening intently. There was nothing at all for about five minutes. I was about to open the door, or ask if he was okay, when he said, "Okay," and I opened the door. I purposely didn't look at him, or at his hands, but I intuited that he held the two black things together like a giant S'mores sandwich. He seemed greatly relieved and at peace, and he wasn't bleeding or frothing at the mouth. He walked slowly to the front door with me and we got outside, and he said something about seeing if it was out of its misery. I offered a plastic bag (we have tons for the dog walks) and said he could just throw it in, tie it up and throw it in my large garbage thing. He said it had been great talking with me, and this had been a first for him, and he clearly just needed to go somewhere and have either a drink or a nap. He'd spent about two hours here.

In summary, then, that's why I've been away: passing of close family member and my self-pity; phone and tablet; a bat in my bathroom.

Now This Is Messed Up

This, from the San Francisco Chronicle:

A coffin over 130 years old was found beneath the front porch (of a Ms. Karner) in San Fran recently. It contained the body of a little girl. Authorities figure it's the body of a girl who had been buried with many other people in cemeteries all over the city, but who had been moved in the 1930s to create room for city expansion, or urban sprawl, or overpopulation. Whatever. The point is: this little girl's coffin was left behind and not moved with everyone else in the 1930s. So just put it where all the other bodies had been moved in the 30s, right?

Not so fast:

That nearly century-old mistake presented a big problem in the present for Karner, who told KPIX that she was left without an option by the city for what she could do provide Miranda a final resting place. The city wouldn't claim the remains, because Miranda was properly buried, but it also wouldn't let her rebury the casket, because Karner could not present a death certificate. The result was that Miranda just remained in limbo in the backyard.

"It put us in this position of having this individual in our backyard and feeling awful as a mom knowing this is a small child," she said.

Lucky, Miranda's story is finding its resolution. Garden of Innocence, an organization that facilitates "dignified burials for abandoned and unidentified children," has offered to rebury her casket this summer.

Me, again. (Sorry for the type change, but I can't seem to fix it.) So, two things:

1. The city won't claim the remains because she'd been properly buried? Didn't it claim the remains of the hundreds of bodies moved in the 1930s? Or, why doesn't an enlightened city administrator (If there is one; we lack one here in my neck of the woods.) just use a little common sense, cut through the red tape, and bury the poor girl with her ancestors? Is that too much to ask?!?

2. So we live in a world where we need a charitable organization that pays for "dignified burials for abandoned and unidentified children"?!? Why are these children abandoned and unidentified? People just drop off or leave behind bodies of dead children? Are you @#$% me? And why isn't the city paying for such a thing as well?

Now that's messed up.

Signs You're Gettin' Old

--You read an article about seven necessary exercises for men and you read this, "Functional exercises train the muscles that are used for everyday activities like mowing the lawn..." and you think, Damn it, mowing the lawn IS my exercise.

--Followed immediately by: Now it's an everyday activity I need to exercise for?

--You put two bricks into the ground to complete a planting barrier, and then surround a plant with six more bricks that you basically just stomped into the ground, and you think that's a good day's work in the sun.

--And it's just in the high 40s. And it took just half an hour.

--You wake up the next morning and your body is a tad sore from this "rigorous work."

--You appreciate sitting in the sun--in a room in your house that gets a lot of sun.

--And you appreciate this room, like you never knew it got so much good sun.

--Because you didn't know, though you've lived in the house for almost five years.

--You realize you're as old as your father was when you thought he was old.

--Your doctor says, "We need to think about your prostate."

--And, "When was the last time you had your cholesterol tested?"

--After hearing this, you feel your blood pressure spiking and you're grateful they've already done that test.

--You monitor how much coffee and water you're drinking, so you don't have to do #1 when you know you'll be in the middle of something important.

--Like, going to see a movie. Or "working" outside.

--You're seriously considering fiber bars and cranberry juice.

--You find yourself typing articles about what gettin' old feels like.

The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work

Photo: The book's cover, from its Goodreads photo.

So it occurred to me, genius that I am, that I've been selling short stories and writing novels (notice the difference there), but I don't know any writers. I mean, at all. Harlan Coben once bought be lunch at an agent's conference in Dedham, Massachusetts, and even sat with me to eat (so of course I've bought all of his books since), but that's it. I don't know any writers at all.

Yes, that's a cry for help. Writers, befriend me!

But I almost digress. The point here is that there are questions writers need answered that non-writers can't help with. Like: Where do ideas come from? What happens when your writing chair and desk don't help you produce anymore? How do you deal with the postpartum depression that hits when you finish a novel you've lived with (in my case) for over 20 years? Should I feel badly that I didn't write today? Or this week? Or this month. (Answer: No. Maybe not. And yes.)

You get the idea. I saw this book in the library, after I realized that I didn't have any writer friends (I do have friends--who think I'm nuts for staring at a computer screen or notebook as often as I do--but I don't have any friends who are writers.) and that I didn't have any answers to these questions, and to many more like them. And that I needed some damn solace. So I checked this book out and read it--sporadically, like I write.

Some selections were minor miracles. Some were breakthroughs. A couple were of no interest and I skimmed those. But, just to share a few things:

--The introductions of the writers and of their works, all written by Marie Arana, are just as interesting as the writers' pieces themselves. Sometimes, more so. To whit: "It may have been when Jane Smiley's husband announced he was running off with her dental hygienist in 1996 that Smiley found herself asking the big questions about life, love and work" (387).

--Jimmy Carter writes about how the Presidency bankrupted him. He had a thriving business going when he got elected. He shelved the business, but four years later found that it had accumulated over $1 million in debt. He had to write his first few books just to make enough money to pay off the debts to keep his house. His real, actual house.

--A remarkable number of very successful authors have been "late-life" writers, as Dominick Dunne put it.

--About 90% of the successful writers in this book also have other careers that actually pay the bills. Over 90% of those are professors.

--There are some excellent quotes and thoughts about what writing is. Everyone chronicled here said that writing is a necessary, blessed vocation--with occasionally large drawbacks.

If you're a writer, or if you're interested in writers or writing, you should read this book. I'm going to find it in a bookstore somewhere shortly.

AHS: Hotel

My thoughts about the first few episodes of AHS: Hotel so far:

This is from "Episode 2--Chutes and Ladders"

1. Whenever I see a scene like the blonde getting a cloud of white powder fluffed on her once she died, I think, "Now there's a sinus infection waiting to happen."  That's how often I get those.

2. Kudos to Falchuck and Company for referencing House of Cards, which isn't a Fox show.

3. I'm guessing that once someone violates one of the Ten Commandments, they're stuck in the Hotel Cortez.  Again, "...prisoners of our own demise."

4. Of course, Holden and the other kids were kidnapped, not sinful.  (And a thousand kudos to the show for the Holden / Catcher in the Rye reference when he was kidnapped on top of the angry horse on the carousel.  That horse was straight from the book's cover.  As is the name Holden itself.)

5. The Shining reference #12 or so: Rotting bodies in the shower.  Same green and brown splotches.

6. Saw the chutes.  Where are the ladders?

7. Ah, there.  In the bar.

8. The little girl wanders off during the fashion show and takes a public bus alone.  Great parenting.

9. Little kids acting in a show this adult is a tiny bit unnerving.

10. Ah.  I was waiting for the Hotel Cortez origin story.


Extra: The guy who built the Hotel Cortez is modeled after the very real H.H. Holmes, the butcher of the 1893 Chicago Expedition / World's Fair.  He built a house there with hallways that went nowhere, rooms to nothing, torture chambers, furnaces.  If you're into serial killers and the creepy, Google him.

Quick Jots 2.1.15

--The website urlmetrics.com says that my website, the one you're currently reading, is ranked 13,660,425 in the entire United States.  I don't know if this is deplorable, or actually really good.  There are about 360 million people in this country, but how many of them have websites or blogs?  10%?  That would place me 13.6 million out of 36 million, which I guess isn't that bad.  But if that ranking also includes sites like msn.com, and other huge pages like that, than the ranking is really impressive.  I mean, I don't post any video, or music.  Very few pics or links.  Mostly, just me ranting, really, and usually about books or movies--not riveting for most people.  So, I can't decide if this is really cool, or if it really isn't, or if I just need to get a life.  Or any combination.  And I don't know how I stumbled upon urlmetrics.com to begin with, as I was just logging off to go to bed.  (It's 1 a.m. on Feb. 1, 2015.)

--And the site said this blog has an estimated worth of $749.93!  This is interesting because I pay less than $50 a year to keep it going, and I don't sell anything on it, and I don't have any ads on it.  Does this mean that my thoughts have actual value?  Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice...

--So now I'm thinking how I can make the actual $749.93 from this, without putting up any ads.  I would never do that to you, my cherished readers, or to myself.  So...anyone wanna cut me a check for $749.93?

--If you wanna see for yourself, here's the link.  The monthly visits and monthly pages viewed stats are way off, by the way.  I get many more than what it says, for both.  I got 1,594 pageviews last month, which was a little low for me, according to the Google Analytics stuff.  I'm just sayin'.  So, I wonder what the ranking would be if the stats were correct on that page?  I need a moment to get over myself.

So what else is going on...

--I got just over 19" of snow here this week, Tuesday and Wednesday.  And it looks like I'm getting 10" to 12" more Sunday night through Tuesday morning.  Damn good thing I have lots of house projects and writing things to do.  And I don't mind the cold, as it actually improves my sinuses.  Still...I think I can do without for awhile now.  I can see more ice on my driveway than cement.

--And it's going to be -3 here Thursday night.  That's real temp, not wind chill.

--I've had enough with the Patriots' hijinks, but still...If you make the teams bring their own 12 footballs, you're begging for a problem.  I mean, the $1 billion + business that's the NFL can't afford its own 24 footballs for one of the two playoff games playing that week?

--And you can't tell me the other teams haven't been doing something with their footballs all this time.  I wonder if the Pats would get ratted on if they didn't win as often.  The Jets, for example, rat on the Pats, not the other way around.  Speaking of which--Every football team has cameras filming the other sideline--a few years ago during Spygate, before that, and even now, I'd bet.  I'd be shocked if that didn't happen in college, too.

--And deflated footballs didn't cause the Colts to lose by 38 points.  Unless the balls themselves can score five touchdowns and a field goal, that is.

--Having said that, a note to the Patriots: Let's just play the game, shall we?

--I'm a Pats fan, but I pick the Seahawks to win.  The Pats have trouble with great rushing QBs.  But Wilson will lose if he throws a handful of picks again.  Belichick has already forgotten more about football than I'll ever know, but I'll say it anyway: If I'm the Pats, I try to shut down the Seahawks's running game, keep Wilson in the pocket, and make him beat me with his arm.  This will be a lot easier if the Pats can lead early by a score or two, so he has to throw.

--As for the halftime show, well...I'm not her target audience, but Katy Perry is amusing.  She doesn't take herself too seriously, and she doesn't try to be more than what she is: a pop star with a core audience of 13-18 year old girls.

--That's not the Super Bowl audience, but we'll see what the Halftime ratings turn out to be.

--And I approve of a recently-released pic of her and her small dog.  It's looking at the camera like the person taking the picture has just said, "Wanna go for a walk?" or "Wanna eat?"

--And, please, I'd take Katy Perry over Rick Perry any day, every day.

--Mitt Romney announced this week that he will not run for president after all.  When asked how sure he was, he said, "Oh, about 47%."

--Mike Huckabee said he probably will run, and Sarah Palin changes her mind (or, "mind") by the minute, so I'm keeping some blog tabs ready to go, just in case.  Cuz there's gonna be a lotta verbal head-scratchin' silliness with those two.

--Speaking of blog tabs, you may have noticed that I have not been using my American Horror Story: Freak Show or Cards and Commentary blogs at all.  Just haven't had the time.  For the record, this past season's AHS was very good, light-years ahead of Coven.  Though the last two or three episodes were just Eh.  But well-done Eh, if you know what I mean.

--Biggest beef: Some sort of odd character judgement by the show's creators.  For the last two years, the last episode was about most of the characters dying, and what kind of "heaven" they go to.

--And there was something disquieting about watching three people eating popcorn while watching a guy dressed in just his underwear drown to death while chained to a cement block.

--Watching someone struggle and die in pain and vain is...well, watching someone struggle and die in pain and vain.  Just because you're watching someone die like that who'd also murdered people and who'd also watched many people die like that, that doesn't mean you're not also murdering him.

--And liking it.

--Now that I put it like that...the last episode wasn't so great after all.

--I'm tired of seeing characters knocked out just so they can wake up and die badly.  Off the top of my head, this also happened in: the remake of The Last House on the Left; True Lies; Die Hard 4, all of the Saw movies, and countless other shows and movies I've seen that I forget because it's now 2 a.m.  It's done for the same effect--this time by the movie's audience--as described above.  The movie-makers will tell you it's done for the audience's catharsis, so the audience will see that evil fails and all is right with the world again--but that's crap, of course, and they know it.

--The movie-makers do that because they assume we all have the same base instincts and desires.

--We don't.  

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin -- Book Review

Photo: Hardcover for the book, from its Wikipedia page.  Not the edition I read.

 
You ever notice the longer a book is, the less you have to write about it?

Anyway, I suppose you wouldn't be reading this review if you haven't already a) read the book; b) seen the HBO series; or c) both, so I won't waste time writing about things you already know.

I'll just point out my favorite parts of this book.

1.  It reads very quickly.  Because it's 1,009 pages, this is no small thing.  Martin doesn't seem to get the recognition for his writing that he deserves.  I'm impressed by his vivid descriptions of just about everything.  Typically, overlong description is probably what Elmore Leonard meant when he said he tried to not write the parts people skip.  But when you're world-building as Martin is here, you really do have to describe almost everything.  This can be tedious in lesser hands.  But I found myself not skipping these parts.  In fact, I didn't skip any parts.  And a neat writerly trick I noticed from him: his sentences have much more alliteration, assonance and consonance than you'd think they would.  These things make the pages move.

2.  Daenerys's trip through the House of the Undying Ones was unbelievably well-written.  (And a figure in there murmurs the title of the entire series: A Song of Ice and Fire.)  Martin somehow encapsulates the themes of the entire series in one trip through this house, and does so both literally and figuratively--and mysteriously.  No small feat, since I've seen the episode already.  But seeing the show does not take away anything from the reading.  If you've been holding back for fear of that, don't delay any longer.

3.  The battle for King's Landing at the end was amazingly taut and suspenseful--again, no small feat, considering I've seen the episodes.  Even though you know what's coming, you're quickly turning the pages.

4.  Martin is able to delve deeply into all of his characters.  This is a helluva achievement because a) he writes about some women, notoriously difficult for a male writer to do; b) he gives equal time to every character, and there's a lot of them; c) he somehow holds it all together without confusing the reader; d) he knows just when to cut away from a character, and he knows just when to come back to a character; e) he doesn't fall into a pattern with his character cuts; he'll go away from a character and come right back to him again, then not return for many chapters.  In other words, it's not always A then B then C and then back to A again.  He cuts to and fro depending on what his story dictates.  I can tell you from personal bitter experience that all of this is not easy to do.  Agents and editors say not to write from too many POVs for a reason.  This may be the exception that proves the rule.

5.  The book is great even though the series follows it very, very closely, with only minor exceptions.  (And one or two major ones.)  But, again, no small feat, since I've seen the episodes and the episodes parallel the book very, very closely.

Anyway, even if you've seen the show, you should read this.  In fact, because you've seen the show, you should read this.

And I don't normally like these kinds of books.  World-building, sword-and-sorcery, knights and fair ladies, medieval stuff...not normally my thing.  Epics in general, especially fantasies, are not for me.  It took me over twenty years to read the three Lord of the Rings books.  I've never even tried to read any of the Harry Potter books (though I have them all).  I'm just too damned impatient for long books and long series.

But, as I mentioned, these may be the exception that proves the rule.

You Know You're A Homeowner When...

Photo: A window in my house.  Notice the wooden shims holding up the second pane of glass so there's no open space between the plastic molding of the storm window and the top of the windowframe.

You know you're a homeowner (of an older house) when...


--you think wooden shims are the bomb.


--and you have hundreds of them throughout the house, in use (like in the pic above) and in storage.


--you've just spent $45 on steel wool, window insulation and caulking.


--you spent an hour walking through the house, studying the perimeters of your windows and doors to see where you need to use that stuff.


--and you've spent an hour or so stuffing steel wool into the gaps between the just-now-rotting wood of your shed and the cement of the shed floor. 


--and you've recently spent an hour or so stuffing steel wool into the gaps between your garage doors and the cement floor of your garage.


--and you've done that more to keep out the damn mice than to keep in the winter heat.


--you start saving money in the beginning of the fall to pay for the winter heating bills.


--you actually pay attention when someone prophecies how warm or cold the upcoming winter will be.


--you feel damn proud of yourself for cleaning out just enough garage space to get your car in there.


--you're happy to hear that two dead mice were found in your shed because last winter they ate your backyard work gloves to shreds and pooped all over the second and third shelves.


--you sing the praises of house spiders because they kill smaller bugs--but they also let you know where the unseen drafts are in your house.  (They'll build their webs there, and you'll see the webs shimmer slightly in the draft.)


--you have a handyman on speed-dial.


--and your landscaper, too.


--and the guy in charge of the water heater and pipes, too.


--and the guy in charge of the heating oil, too.


--you make sure you can pay the mortgage before you think about the next food shopping bill.  (Because you know the old ladies across the street will give you enough bagels, crackers and cheese to hold you over.)


--you realize you're a wood hoarder.  (I have more wood than you'll find in many small forests.)


--you can write a long-ish blog entry about the idiosyncratic things you do when you own a house.

Police

Photo: An uncopyedited proof, the type given to early readers, or beta-readers.  And, considering the editing job done on this book (see comment below), it apparently remained uncopyedited.  From crimefictionlover.com.

Very, very, very disappointing follow-up to Nesbo's Phantom, a far superior book, even with the ridiculous passages from the rat's POV.  In equal parts boring and frustrating--but mostly frustrating--Police is a book that could've been, and should've been, much better. 

It fails because it's all over the place with its plot and story, and because it doesn't focus enough on its characters.  Nesbo said in an interview that he essentially wrote Phantom and Police as one book, and it shows.  At over 1,000 pages combined, it seems like Nesbo couldn't wait to finish with the ending, that even he became bored and frustrated with it.

How else to explain the inexplicable demise of a major recurring character?  How else to explain how the killer could've had the time to draw and quarter this well-liked character while on the run from everyone?  Could the killer really have chopped off her arms and legs and head in (seemingly) minutes?  Then stash them all in different bags and deposit them in the trash just in time for the trucks?

What?!?  And, by the way, didn't this character deserve so much better?  She's rarely considered for the rest of the book--though everyone was sure not to sit in her chair--and it's never explained why she was done away with when other characters were not, even when we were tricked into thinking they would be.

And that was another thing.  Way too many cheap tricks, like making us think a character's young daughter was in danger when her father calls her friend Emilie's house to inquire about her sleepover.  Turns out, she was at the sleepover after all--just at a different girl's house...another girl in the same class, also named Emilie!!!  Ugh...

Another time a character looks like she's about to get it, but it was just another character sneaking up on her.  She even says that, hey, you're not John Doe--but it turns out he was.  She just meant that he wasn't acting like himself.  Please...

Another time a very distraught father was acting strange at the scene of his daughter's death, just after a character in the previous section said that murders were committed by someone distraught about love, and at the death scene of those he loved.  Turns out, though, that this guy was actually just in grief about his daughter dying, one year to the day...Argh!

The real bad guy is a case of who cares.  The ones you wanted to be guilty--two REALLY bad guys--lose an eye and gets his face burnt off, apparently without too many aftereffects or problems.  They go out in public and live their lives as if nothing happened.  Must've been a great surgery for the guy who lost his eye, though the guy who did it was never a doctor or surgeon, or in any health-related field at all.

And who was that body in the hospital all that time?  Not who you think, but considering how Phantom ended, you couldn't be blamed for not knowing.  Turns out, a character from that book hadn't died after all!  How could the reader have known?  Well, you couldn't, but that's the way it is, anyway.

And where's the REALLY, REALLY bad guy everyone spends most of the book looking for?  Nobody ever says.  Wait for the sequel, I guess.  The only intriguing character is a very beautiful, and very unbalanced (Isn't that always the way?) young woman who does something very touching--and out of character--at the end.  You won't believe it, just like I didn't.

Very cheap.  Very lazy.

And really disappointing, because I like the series and I like the writer.  In fact, I was just thinking of incorporating a technique of his that he uses at the end of every book--what some writers have called his "set pieces," which they essentially are, in a play kind of way.  I now realize that these have to be exquisitely staged and described because a) they end every book; b) they're the resolution of the action / mystery / who-dun-it? / police procedural; and c) they're actually the climax, if you combine them with the next book, which I realize is how Nesbo actually writes these.  So they serve a ton of functions.

But, because of this, they have to be perfect.  Great when they are, as most of them have been.  Really bad when they're not.  And when you combine that with everything I've described above, and throw in a lousy editing job (this could've easily been a few hundred pages shorter), you have a real clunker.

And what he did to that recurring female character--chopped her up into many pieces, without mentioning how important she'd been to the series, or her now-orphaned young son--and throw in the fact that she was apparently alive during most of the chopping up...Indefensibly awful.

So bad I'm driven by it to work on my own book, and to treat my characters much better.  Bad things will still happen to them, but they won't be (or remain) unexplained.  And I'll treat them, as I hope I always have, with much more respect.

So frustrating because, again, Nesbo is a good writer, and though the tricks in this book are cheap, they work because you turn the pages.  You want to figure everything out.  You want to see what happens.  You want to see it all unravel.  And in that sense this book isn't awful, exactly, because I read its 550 hardcover pages in about 24 hours or so.

And I'll read the next one, too.

But...

Free Contest to Win A T206--1,400 T206s for Auction at Saco River Auction Co. January 2015

[Free contest to win a free 1909-1911 T206 explained at the bottom of this entry, in the P.P.S.  Contest ends midnight, Sept. 30, 2014.]

Yeah, that's right.  If you're into baseball cards at all, you know the T206s.  I've posted a few pics of the few I have.  This is the set that has the Honus Wagner card, formerly owned by Wayne Gretzky and others, worth literally millions of dollars.

Well, in January 2015, the Saco River Auction House, in Biddeford, Maine, will auction off the Portland Trove of T206s.  One thousand, four hundred of them.  All in good condition, or better.  All of them.  At an average of $50 per card--a very low estimate, considering there are Christy Mathewson cards, Walter Johnsons, Ty Cobbs, etc.--that's still $70,000 worth of T206 baseball cards being sold.  The real fetching price will most likely by ten times that, or more than $700,000.

To show you the awesomeness of this, look at the pics:

Can you believe that?!?  Oh, my goodness.  This makes me want to vomit in jealousy and greed, except I can't stop looking at the pics and wishing I had them.

Of course, since there are only 527 known cards in the set (though variations pop up even now, every so often), there are going to be some duplicates.  My guess is--the piles you see on the tables in the pics are the duplicates of that card.  So if a John Anderson, let's say, (in the second-to-last pic, he's in the second row from the bottom, all the way to the right; looks like he's praying) is on a small stack of three cards, I'm going to bet there are three John Andersons in the collection.  (There's only one John Anderson in the set.)  How did this happen?  Simple: The story is that a gentleman living in NYC in 1909 or so started smoking.  His choice of smoke was the El Principe de Gales--one of the rarest backs in the set!  Anyway, he smoked the stuff and kept the card the pouch came with.  And often, it'll come with a card he already had.  Like getting a duplicate in the wax packs we bought as kids.

So, if you're not doing anything on a particular day TBA in January 2015, and if the weather isn't too bad, I might just take a drive up to 2 Main Street in Biddeford, Maine--about a three hour drive, or so.  Hopefully the auction is on a Friday or Saturday night!  I might save up a little bit by then, and take my list of cards.  If you're into T206s, maybe I'll see you there.  Save your pennies: All of the cards in this trove were graded by SGC, and they're all in good condition or better.

Speaking of card collections, do you have one?  If so, what's your favorite?  Or do you have a favorite specific card, or set?  If you don't collect cards, what do you collect, and which of those is your favorite?

P.S.--Speaking of T206s, I've got a few extras, so I'll be having contests on this blog every now and then and giving one away for free.  Caveat: None of the ones I'm giving away are professionally graded.  They're known as "raw" cards, and they'd list in Poor, Poor / Fair, or Fair condition, but will still be worth at least ten bucks each, even in bad condition.  (I mean, they're free, so waddaya want?)  I'll mail it in a tobacco card toploader.  Stay tuned.

P.P.S.--In fact, what the hell.  I'll have a contest here and now.  Just answer the question(s) above the P.S. in a comment to this blog entry and I'll enter you in a random drawing to win one of my extra T206s from 1909-1911.  Each is worth somewhere between $10 to $25 and can be easily mailed to you.  If you're the winner, I'll ask that you send me an email.  When you do, I'll email you pics of the ones I've got available, and you can pick whatever one you want.  I'll mail it to you free of charge as well.  It can fit in a regular envelope, after all. 

A Visit to Lizzie Borden's House

Photo: Lizzie Borden's house--the murder house, not Maplecroft, where she later moved--at 92 Second Street, Fall River, MA as it looked in 1892.  From Lizzie Borden's Wikipedia page.
 

Photo: Lizzie Borden's actual books, in the Lizzie Borden house.  The 9th one from the left--the thick blue one, is titled When Ghost Meets Ghost.  This photo, and all the following photos, were taken by me in the Lizzie Borden house.  Please note: Out of respect for the proprietors of the Lizzie Borden House, I do not show any of the meatier (reads: gruesome, but better to draw in blog readers) pics that are available there (and on my phone's camera).  The address is 92 Second Street (GPS address is 230 Second Street) in Fall River, MA.  It's open from 11-3, seven days a week.  You can reserve a day and time as well.  Go to the official website: https://lizzie-borden.com/.  They have a cool thing going on over there, and I don't want to rain on their parade, so you'll have to take the tour (just $15 per person for 50 minutes) to see the pics I speak of here, and in the blog below.  Many of the pics you'll see in this entry are ones I took at the Borden House, but are also popular pics of this case, and are commonly found online.


Recently (on Lizzie's birthday, July 19th, as it turned out; 1 in 365 chance there) I went to Lizzie Borden's house, just half an hour away from my own house, just to have a look-see.  I'm planning to write a novel (one of many planned; if I had world enough, and time) about the murder and trial, told from the POV of the maid, who moved away from the house on that fateful day, and died in Montana.

The house is now a bed and breakfast, and it gives tours through the day.  The tour guide (who seemed honestly surprised that our tour took about an hour) through the house was the daughter of the guy who now owns the place.  She did a great job, and clearly likes what she's doing.  How many high school seniors can say that they work at a (possibly) real haunted house (though for the record I didn't get any creepy vibes), and that they talk to people about a famous murder that, at the time, was called "The Crime of the Century" over 100 years before O.J.?  Well, she can.  (And she said a ghost pulled her earlobe there when she was a kid, and that other guests report strange things, including Abby Borden's ghost saying nice, motherly things).  She was very knowledgeable about her subject matter (though she may have fudged a little about the maid's infamous last words--that weren't; I'll explain later, at the end of this blog entry), very friendly and energetic, and very interested in Fall River in general.  She has a career as an actress or guide, but she said she was going to college to be a biologist.

I highly recommend the tour.  You can just show up like I did, and (because they were running late) go right on the tour without any waiting.  It's only $15 a person, and you can take all the pics and all the notes you want.  No film, though, I think.  But you can ask.  The address is 92 Second Street (GPS address is 230 Second Street) in Fall River, MA.  It's open from 11-3, seven days a week.  You can reserve a day and time as well.  Go to the official website: https://lizzie-borden.com/.  They have a nifty catchphrase on the page: "Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum: Where Everyone Is Treated Like Family."  Well, I hope not!

Anyway, it's a well-maintained place with some of the real house stuff, though most of the things in there now were time-accurate pieces bought at auctions, etc.  (But the couch Mr. Borden was murdered on, the one you see in all the online pics, is the exact one that is still in the house.  If you look at the pics [too gruesome to put here], you'll see why--Who could get all that stuff out in 1892?)  I think the step-mother's bed is the same, but I could be wrong.  Unfortunately, the real things fell into neglect, as Lizzie was jailed for a long time after the murder, and the sister and maid moved away, and everything just kind of went to hell.  After the acquittal, they took whatever they wanted with them (Lizzie went to Maplecroft, up the street, which actually looks creepier than the Lizzie Borden house does today) and the rest went into storage.  What happened to all that 1892 stuff after that is anybody's guess.

The Lizzie Borden House was bought by people, and then again, and again...the current owner has really spiffed the place up for his business (the place and tour aren't as business-y as the website is), and the house itself is really well-cared for.  The tour guide was very honest about the things in the house--but as a writer, I really just needed to see the house, to stage what happened in there in my mind.  For example, how else would I have known that there aren't any hallways in the place at all?  One door opens into a room, and then another does the same, and so on.  No hallways with rooms off of them; no privacy at all, one would think.  And, as the informative and energetic guide pointed out, if you compare some of Lizzie's testimony with the layout of the house, you can see that she was lying.  For example, she said that she was in the dining room, ironing, and didn't hear the step-mother or her father being murdered.  But if you stand in the room she said she'd been in, you could see this would not be possible.  It's amazing how close everything is in the house.

So, if you're in the area, go see the Lizzie Borden House.  I also went to see Maplecroft, where she moved later.  (Just a few minutes away, the house is nothing to be named.  Only Newport mansions were named back then, and this place is a far cry from that, and even more so today.  As I said, it looks like it would be more haunted than the murder house does.  It's possible that she was putting on airs.)  I also went to see the cemetery where all of the Bordens are buried; that's just up the street in a huge cemetery on the peninsula.  The cemetery's main road has small white arrows pointing to the exact spot the Bordens are interred so that nobody gets lost and / or defaces any other gravestones--like people have at poor Mercy Brown's grave.

Blogs will follow about the murder house, Maplecroft, Fall River, and the cemetery.  Until then, a few pics:

This is a picture of the Borden house and surrounding homes as they would've been in 1892.  Today, only the Borden house is left.  It's a busy street now--as it was then--but there are newer homes, businesses, apartment houses, a cathedral.  I know it's 122 years later, but it's still shocking how much things change.

This is the room where Andrew Borden was killed.  The actual couch he was killed on is to the left in this pic.  Here it is, closer up:

And here's the bed beside which Abby Borden was killed.  The famous picture of her kneeling beside the bed was taken after her body had been moved for the picture.  Initially, she'd been trying to get under the bed, her arms were outstretched, and her skirt had ridden up.  The first doctor on the scene moved her body to a more "lady-like" position.

There are some very gruesome pics indeed I could have shown here, but out of respect for the proprietors of the Borden House, not to mention of the dead, I won't do so here.  You'll have to go to the Borden House (again, which I highly recommend) to see them; or, if you're interested in this stuff, you've probably already seen the more hideous and infamous pics online.  The one above is a popular pic.  But at the House you can see a pic of what Abby's head--and the huge thick puddle of blood--looked like.  The House has a picture of a camera taking a picture from the other side of the bed, facing the mirror / dresser you can see in this photo, to the upper left.  Reflected in the mirror is an 1892 camera taking the picture--and it is very bloody and gory.  If you're into this kind of thing, you've probably seen the online pic of Andrew Borden's devastated face and skull, as he'd lay on that aforementioned couch, his head on his folded coat, which he used as a pillow.  Very creepy, because it's taken from a short distance, and there are shadows, yet you can still see the damage.  There's another one at the Lizzie Borden House that I hadn't seen: the autopsy shot of him lying on an 1892 gurney at the Borden home, just hours after he died.  (A second autopsy was done later, after his funeral, at the Oak Grove Cemetery where he, his wives and his daughters are now buried.)  This is one of the most gruesome I've ever seen, which is saying something.  Creepiest thing is that, although the face is almost completely obliterated, you can see hair and ears that look perfectly normal.

To give you a sanitized feel for it all, here are their fake--but historically accurate--skulls.  His on the left, hers on the right.  (Their real skulls were infamously separated from their bodies and used as visual aids at the trial--and then put back with their bodies, in the wrong places!)  Notice the damage done on his skull on the side, as that would be the side facing up while he was asleep on the couch, facing out.  Her damage was done on the back and right side, as she'd been facing away at the time of the first blows, and Lizzie was right-handed.  Supposedly Abby then turned to the side, either in stunned surprise, or because she was folding something on the bed, and that's why much of the damage is there as well.

Well, that's it for now.  More of this morbid stuff to come, including paragraphs and pics of Lizzie's murder house and her later abode, at Maplecroft, as well as of the people involved and of their final resting place.

Oh, yeah, the maid.  So it's in the 1940s now, and Bridget Sullivan, the maid, lives in Montana.  As the story goes, she gets really sick with pneumonia and thinks she's dying.  She sends word to a friend to come see her before she dies because she has something very important to say.  (Why she couldn't just call this person is a mystery, since by the 40s phones were commonplace.)  Anyway, this friend travels to Montana, but by the time the friend gets there, Bridget has recovered and doesn't say anything about the murder.  Then she dies four or five years later, never having said anything about what she was going to say when she was sick.

This is, by the way, where my planned novel starts.  Flashbacks, then it bookends with her getting better--and then dying, never having said whatever it was she thought it had been really important to say.

Or...did she say something after all? 

American Horror Story: Murder House

Photo: 1120 Winchester Place, Los Angeles, CA.  This is the real house used in the series.  From the show's Wikipedia page

I decided to view Season One of American Horror Story after viewing Season Two and liking it so much.  Season One was also good, though not as much as Season Two.  The writers seemed to have written themselves out of the main characters, as the secondary ones take over here, and where they go is interesting, but since they're already dead, you care less about them as characters.

At first the very dysfunctional family of husband, wife and (suicidal) high school daughter move into this (very) haunted house.  Turns out, the house has many ghosts in it: a gay couple, murdered fewer than three years before the current occupants; a surgeon who can't pay his bills, and the wife who shot him, and then herself; one of his freelance abortion patients; and, most dangerously, a teenage psychopath who had killed many students in his school before he was shot in his bedroom by the police.  He's a very angry, or still-psychotic, ghost who later kills the gay couple (and does something really nasty to one of them with a fireplace poker), and later rapes the mother, a current occupant, who later dies giving birth to what the show insinuates is Satan's spawn.  Was the killer used by Satan, or was he evil to begin with?  Or both?  The viewer can decide, but the characters themselves conclude that he is just pure evil, and the Devil's spawn angle is downplayed, though never really done away with.  And there are many, many other ghosts I haven't written about here, some of whom have little, if anything, to do.

Therein lies the problem of the first season: the writing in the last six episodes or so meanders, and seems very unsure of itself as it does so.  The Black Dahlia is introduced without reason, more as an homage to the L.A. noir style itself, and maybe James Ellroy, who famously wrote about her, and who infamously said she may his mother, or that her killer may have been his father, or both, I forget.  Other homages include Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, in the sense that the movie's music is played in almost every episode.  Other movies in the Dracula, Frankenstein, and Southern Gothic modes, as well as lots of Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, and the like are paid homage as well.  Part of the joy of the series is catching and appreciating all of them.  You don't have to know them, though, to appreciate the series.

But back to the uneven writing.  What to do with the family?  Well, the writers didn't seem to know, either.  What to do with the many very unhappy ghosts?  In a nice twist, the family of ghosts ends up a much happier trio together than they ever did while they were alive.  Is the American family unit the "horror story" of the title?  It certainly seems that way, except the adults are so caught up in their own garbage that they don't even realize their daughter is dead.  (Though, to be fair, she doesn't know this, either, until she's told.)  The most wacky thing to me was that none of the ghosts seems to care too much that they're dead.  This is especially true of the father at the end, who is the only one left alive, and who seems to have the most to live for--his new child.  When he's killed by the ghost of his very young mistress (Kate Mara, older sister of Rooney Mara, from The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo), he seems mildly chagrined, at most.  The mother also doesn't seem to mind, though she knows she's without at least one of her newborns (she's told the first one died, but it didn't, and that's the one she ultimately ends up caring for); she also doesn't know her daughter's dead until her daughter visits her and says to let go of the pain, which the mother does.  (This seemed like too much of a condoning of suicide for me, which is how the daughter died, as well.)  Anyway, if the characters don't seem to take their lives very seriously, how can the viewer?

And that's the whole point at the end: the series creator's don't want you to feel sad for the family, and you don't, as they're clearly happier and better off than they had been.

How does it want you to feel about the Jessica Lange character, the devious and unsaintly and witchy neighbor who had lived in the house with her psychotic son, her wayward husband, her loose maid and her other two children, all of whom die before the very end?  Well, good and bad, in turns, though at the end she's gotten what she's asked for--a grandchild--but does she really want to take care of Satan's spawn?  I don't know, though I doubt it.  Jessica Lange does great work with a meandering role that makes her a victim and a killer.  You feel badly for her, because most of her siblings are dead and/or psychotic (and, in one case, both), but you also see her kill her husband, their maid, and almost the daughter next door.  In that last case, the daughter and her mother are victims of three psychotic people who want to kill them as others had been killed in the house.  Luckily, one of them eats the poisoned cupcake meant for the daughter, and...here's an example of the meandering.  Turns out, this entire series of events was unnecessary to the outcome of the whole thing.

So, at the end, this was like a good horror movie.  Riveting and sometimes creepy while watching it, but the second you think about the whole thing afterwards, it is very easy to see its many flaws.  But, if you haven't seen any of it yet, I do recommend it, especially if you're knowledgeable about the genres it pays homage to.

The Conjuring House

Photo: I took this pic of an open crypt door at a cemetery near The Conjuring House.

After watching The Conjuring (my movie review, here), I decided to take a trip to Burrillville, Rhode Island (about half an hour away) and see the house it's based on.  My intention was to just go for a nice drive with my dog and to get out of the house for awhile.  If I could inobtrusively get a glimpse of the house from the road, fine.  If not, I'll just drive by and see what there was to see.

I want to make it clear that I do not condone anyone going to the house and loitering around.  There's an old couple that lives in there now, and they have a right to their privacy.  Having said that, I won't be a hypocrite, and I'll admit that I took a few pictures from the street of the house's front door (that's all of the house you can really see; it's not at all like the one in the film) and of the nearby barn, which I thought looked creepier than the house.  I was hoping for a glimpse of the lake in the backyard; the house is in a management area, so there's a real possibility of such a thing.  But, alas, no.  Anyway, I do not condone or advise for anyone to do what I just said I did, even from the street, and I'll explain why.  But before I do, ask yourself: Do you want a crowd of people congregating in the street, gawking at you and your home, and taking pictures of your house and barn?  One of the women I met there even told someone she was going to go up to the door and knock on it, or ring the bell.

I advised her not to do so.  Not only is it loitering and trespassing, but, also, according to the true story, that's the same front door that the evil spirits banged on relentlessly.  This latter part worked.

So I started off from my house with my dog and my directions.  Driving up there was very easy.  I got a little lost from poor signage, but I found the house in question, no problem, and even drove past it and soon entered Massachusetts.  I pulled over beside a large local cemetery (of course), and I let the dog out in some nearby grass away from the cemetery.  (People who let their dogs go to the bathroom in a cemetery at all, especially if they don't clean it up, are committing a blasphemy of some sort.)  Unfortunately, the dog did #2, so I double-bagged it and then threw that into a Dunkin' Donuts paper bag, so at least it didn't smell, and later I threw it away in a garbage can at a nearby gas station, much to the cashier's dismay.  I also entered the cemetery on my own and saw four other people also in it, which is rare.  I looked around very quickly for any stones from real-life people mentioned in my research, but I didn't find any.  I did not look very thoroughly, to be honest, and later I realized it was a waste of time, anyway, because I was now in a small town in Massachusetts, which people living in a house in a small RI town would not be buried in.  Didn't quite think that through.  A few pictures of this cemetery follow:

So I turned back around and headed to The Conjuring's house, which is mostly hidden behind some tall, thick trees, not far from a main road (for Burrillville, anyway) without a breakdown lane.  I saw six other people come out of an SUV and just stand, mostly out of view from the house, so I stepped out of my car.  I noticed the barn, quite a bit away from the house, so a few pictures were taken of that.  I did not want to spend time in front of the house, as I felt very strongly that the homeowners would be ready for that, and would be very unamused.   But I stepped out when I saw the others, and we talked about where they were from, and how long it took to get to this house.  Schenectady, and almost three hours, as I'd mentioned.  I took a couple of pictures of the front door through the many trees, had time to realize that the real house looked nothing at all like the movie's house (it's a lot smaller, and not as obviously old), and a woman next to me swore, and that's when I saw the swirling lights of the police car.

I walked slowly back to my car before he even stopped out of his.  The cop was very, very stern-looking, a countenance that he must practice in the mirror every day.  Nobody is that serious and stern, I swear.  But I'll bet that he gets a lot with that look, so that he doesn't have to say anything, or threaten anyone, or anything.  In fact, he didn't say a word to any of us, and we all went back to our cars immediately and drove away.

I doubt it was the first time he was at that house (it was about one pm when I got there) and I doubt it'll be his last.  In fact, I was surprised not to see a sign of any kind at the house.  I'll bet there'll be one there soon.  I drove away feeling very sheepish.  I mean, I wouldn't be happy if lots of people even drove slowly past my house, never mind actually stop, get out, gawk, and take pictures.

So I feel badly about it all, which is why I won't post pics of the house and barn here.  But, like I said, you're not missing much, as there wasn't much to see to begin with.  On the way back I stopped at a lake and waterfall, pictured here:

And after I left there, I went sight-seeing for a little while, and drove by two or three local cemeteries on both sides of the narrow road, so that it seemed like I was surrounded by them, which I was.  When I saw the open crypt door, I knew I had to turn around and take a picture of that for something I'm writing--a novel that mostly takes place in TB-infested Rhode Island of the 1880s and 1890s, and is told from the third-person limited POV following the doctor of Rhode Island's most famous example of vampire folklore, Mercy Brown (blog entry here).

So I took some pics of that open crypt door, and the very cool rusted-iron Victorian fence that surrounds some of the gravestones, pictured here:

And that's it.  That's my story of traveling to The Conjuring's house.  Truth be told, the lake, waterfall, crypt and cemeteries were more interesting, and much easier to take pictures of.  And I regret not opening that metal door on the inside of the crypt, with the diamond shapes.

What's your favorite recent (or not-so-recent) horror movie?  Have you ever visited the real-life place, or researched the real-life subject matter or story, etc. of that horror movie?

And would you have gone inside that crypt's open door?