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| The doors to the bathrooms were solid wood; they were replaced with glass so that tourists would not mistake them for functioning bathrooms, which they are not. The only functioning bathroom was outside Sarah Winchester's bedroom, which had a small window for a nurse to check in on her, later in her life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Mystery_House |
I loved ghost stories as a kid. Whenever a new catalog from a particular children's book club came around the classroom, I always circled a few key titles for my perusal: ghost stories, vampire tales, paperbacks from the horror genre, and the "Guinness Book of World Records". Anything about the supernatural or fantastical immediately captured my imagination, like faked spirit photographs from the early 19th century, or those infamously blurry and deliberately ambiguous images of the Loch Ness monster. How could anyone prove or disprove such vague claims?
It was in this quest for the truth that my first tentative paranormal investigations began, heightened by my natural curiosity about the big, unanswered questions behind common cultural mysteries. I never really believed in space aliens or crop circles, but I was fascinated by the gullible people who did, usually fringe characters who never really fit into the world, seeking phantom societies they felt more comfortable with.
Eventually, every huge hoax has been exposed to reveal the more interesting truths behind them, like: why would a group of British artists spend their evenings developing mathematically-accurate concentric circles in flattened fields of wheat? Well, because they're beautiful, and because mass hysteria is a prevalent human phenomenon, so much so, that for many years, major universities in England devoted departmental funds to their art, mislabeled as surreal, nocturnal alien encounters (http://www.circlemakers.org/). The art is actually much better than some invisible ghouls that go "bump" in the night, but the stories and untruths inspired by creative acts are part of the culture that surrounds each myth-making legend attached to them.
I was reminded by such a cultural creation walking uphill from town with one of my friends from the "basic yoga for disabled seniors" class that's held every Monday at our community center. She told me a great story about an older man who owned several trade magazines (they published journals for electricians, boat builders, etc), who disappeared on a yachting trip. She didn't think much of it at the time, because the younger son immediately took up his vacant post to evade lingering questions among the staff and authorities working the case. She attached her memory of the event not to his untimely death, but to the area called "The Bermuda Triangle". She cited all the typically kooky stories we've all read in the same pulp fiction outlets, like those Big Foot photos that never seem to be in clear focus. Isn't that odd?
Much like ruining a younger sibling's belief in the tooth fairy, I felt bad for letting her know that there are no unknown, uncharted giant invisible whirlpools that suck in boats from the ocean, much like there aren't invisible air-shafts over Bermuda that pull down planes into the sea without mechanical or pilot error. Stories like that are great cover-ups for nefarious deeds, though, which is the more likely part of the scenario behind the disappearance of her publisher way back then: that he didn't know how to captain his own ship, thus was lost to the rough currents and sudden squalls that any good sailor knows how to combat effectively (and here in the conversation I cited Robert Redford's movie "All is Lost", as a recent example of one man's battle against the sea), or that he absconded with company funds and staged a fake death so that he could make off with all the money.
Even worse (and this I didn't share with her because she has a fragile psyche), may be that his own son murdered him so he could take over the family business, which happens a lot more than we think. My friend said she looked up the old company online, and they are no longer in business, which didn't surprise me at all. Well-constructed edifices do not topple easily. The name of the building she worked in has changed, too, but she didn't want to hear the truth. She wanted to believe in comfortable fairy tales that remain mysteries forever, because she disassociates from reality. I asked her a few quick, sharp questions designed to assess her ability to observe her surroundings while in yoga class, and she failed every assessment test I gave her, not that I'm trying to ruin my friend's peace of mind.
Far from it. I want to build her up so that she tells me her really good stories, like the one she mentioned about the mysteriously absent pater familias, because I told her the truth: those are the stories publishers actually want. She walked away from me full of new information that she will almost certainly struggle to assimilate effectively, which is also point of the point. If she can learn to build her stories around real structures that hold, then she won't be tempted to lapse into unproductive patterns of thought that go nowhere, like her mythical Bermuda Triangle, the worst kind of cultural deception there is, because it's not real. In fact, there's nothing magical there at all.
It reminded me of the old story about Sarah Winchester, the wacky eccentric heir to the Winchester family fortune (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Repeating_Arms_Company), who said she built staircases to nowhere to accommodate the dead people murdered by the rifles her family's company made, a story told to me in grainy black-and-white photos from an old paperback I ordered many years ago, through my elementary school's book-buying program. I felt sorry for Sarah, even as I understood the power of her penance. She lived through the profit from a culture of death we are still living in now (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2010-10-20-remington-700-trigger-cnbc_N.htm), as evil a stain as any human could ever hope to bear, and no wonder she couldn't stand the weight of it.
Would you be able to live in a fancy mansion, knowing that your family murdered millions of average people, just like you? If you can't (and you know you can't), then how can you ask your peers to bear up under the sin of killing that's behind every mass murder? We can't go on like this. Let's tackle gun reform laws revised for mandatory licensing, certification, and permits for legal gun ownership, with psychological background checks cleared before we issue permits to the ill and infirm. It's why you're seeing more frequently open manifestations of extremely violent events. We're shining a light on the darkness that hides within. We're winning.
