Decemystery (2023) 30: The Glowing Dancing Bulls

 

I believe I’ve said this on this blog before, but I like to dance, slow dance, to be exact. I don’t know why, but I find it relaxing and soothing. Unfortunately, I have no one to dance with, so I often dance around my room alone. Not that it matters that much because I’m not exactly the best dancer.

Thankfully, I have my writing; that means I’m not at risk of hurting my dance partner. Also, it means I get to go down all sorts of weird rabbit holes that lead to all sorts of strange, bizarre discoveries. That includes today’s story. For the penultimate entry of Decemystery 2023, we have the tale of The Glowing Dancing Bulls. Come along, dear reader; this is gonna be a really memorable one!

Decemystery (2023) 11: The Creature at the Cabin Door

 

Oh, hey there. Welcome back to my blog; please make yourself comfortable near the campfire. Help yourself to some marshmallows, too. I don’t like them, to be quite honest; I never have. But I bought them because that’s what people do when camping, I think. Truthfully, I have never gone camping.

Anyway, enough with the silly roleplaying. I needed something to kickstart this write-up since, even though this is the thirty-ninth Decemystery I’m doing, introductions have gotten no easier. In fact, ever since I returned to writing at the start of the year, I’d dare say they’ve only gotten harder.

My bemoaning aside, I want to return to a website we visited the other day: “About,” the one that hosted the story of the Mexican Tongue Monster. I mentioned that it appeared to be a treasure trove that I would need to pilfer. Well, a few months after covering that story, I decided to return and snoop around. I was right; it’s a host to a lot of wild, jaw-dropping stories. So, in the coming days, we’ll be returning to it a lot.

The first I want to take a look at is entitled The Creature at the Cabin Door. This sounds like something akin to a generic creepypasta, but it’s a truly unsettling and bizarre story from the forests of New York. So come along; it’s time to go camping in the Adirondack Mountains!

Mystery: The Black Dahlia. A Tragedy Turned Mythical

The Case of the Black Dahlia, A Tragedy Turned Mythical

Here’s a simple question: how does someone solve a crime? “Evidence,” you say, “you need evidence to solve a crime.” You look for motive, a weapon, things left by the perpetrator. You learn about the victim if someone died. You check with people who knew the victim, people last seen with the victim, the whole nine yards. You start with a large group of suspects and narrow it down, sometimes you find the right person, sometimes not. Sometimes you missed something, sometimes very little could be done. 

Okay, now think about the many infamous American crimes, OJ Simpson, the Zodiac, Lizzie Borden. There are misconceptions of course but it’s not hard to find out what the evidence was. In the case of Borden: a young woman’s father and step mother were brutally murdered with an ax, said woman had a negative relationship with the two and there were some issues involving inheritance. The primary suspect was the daughter, who after a long trial was found innocent but doubt still lingers. Also something something lesbian conspiracy theory, an idea that will come up later, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves now.  

OJ: a famous football player’s wife is brutally murdered along with another man she was seeing. Said player was known to be aggressive and had previously beaten her. There is a bloody glove, a car chase, and a lack of other suspects. There is a long drawn out trial where the prime suspect is found innocent but doubt lingers.  

Zodiac: a man goes around San Francisco and neighboring areas, shooting and stabbing various people while sending cryptic messages and puzzles. Many people are suspected but nobody is found guilty and the crime spree stops by the 1970s. These statements are all broadly speaking, true. All of these crimes are technically unsolved, although with Borden and OJ many people strongly believe the courts got it wrong.  

Now finally we have what is arguably the most famous unsolved murder in US history, or at least the most famous unsolved Los Angeles murder. A beautiful girl who is an up and coming actress, brutally tortured and murdered. She is found cut in half in a vacant lot. It later comes out that she was promiscuous, perhaps even a lady of the night. The prime suspect is a creepy doctor obsessed with a surrealist artist who is a suspect in several other murders. He is almost arrested, but flees to another country never to return. The press nicknames this poor soul the Black Dahlia and it passes into legend as what fate awaits young aspiring stars.  

There is just one problem, unlike the other summaries, almost everything I just said is bullshit. Unlike many famous criminal cases, like Jack the Ripper, the objective truth is fairly difficult to obtain. Odds are, your understanding of the Dahlia case is wrong in some form. It’s not your fault, the facts started to become blurry not long after her tragic death. With each retelling the truth becomes hazier. By now the woman who was once named Elizabeth Short has more in common with Elizabeth Bathory then Nicole Brown Simpson. Less a human, more a legend. Her case is still open to this day, staffed by LAPD officers who were born years after the murder took place.  

There has never been a good book written about the subject. There has never been an accurate movie. There has never been a truthful television show. There has never been a fully honest video game. Every secondary source you can obtain is flawed, which makes researching this crime, especially if you don’t live in the LA area, incredibly difficult. I can’t claim to know all the facts and I’m sure I made some mistakes. With all that said, tonight let’s talk about the tale of Elizabeth Short, at least to the best of my knowledge.

Preface: almost all of the information in this post comes from former LA Times writer Larry Harnisch. He is the foremost expert on the history of LA and the Black Dahlia case. He has been writing a book on the subject for almost 20 years. If he is reading this, God bless your heart Larry, you are a great writer. I pray that book comes out soon. Here is a link to his old site. Here’s one to his current site.

A photo of Larry Harnisch. From Tyler and I, thank you for your assistance and kindness. It means the world to us!

Decemystery (2019) 13: Snuff Films (NSFL Version)

Life is cheap.

A serious warning: this entry contains graphic discussion of murder, torture, animal abuse, and child rape. Reader discretion is highly advised.

Today’s entry is special. There are two versions of it: one that contains extreme levels of horrible detail and one that’s much less grisly since I don’t want to alienate those who want to follow this blog series religiously.

This diversification of the blog is easy to explain: today’s entry is on Snuff Films. If you aren’t familiar with them, then boy oh boy are you in for a trip. If you’re reading this particular intro, odds are you’re doing it in passing or you’re feeling gutsy. It’s the NSFL version and it’s the one with all of the fun, brutal, hard-to-stomach details. So let’s get to it! Or you can scroll up for the SFW version.

What Could Have Been: Fant4stic

November of 1961 saw the creation of Marvel Comics “First Family”. Known as the Fantastic Four, the series lead to the creation of the Marvel Universe. Such a massively successful property by today’s standards should be ripe for a movie franchise given the gargantuan success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Such an assumption would be wrong in so many ways, you could write an entire book on it.

Like the X-Men, the movie license to the Fantastic Four is owned by Fox, though they were initially owned by Constantin Film. Since 1992, there have been a total of four films featuring the titular heroes. The first was made by Roger Corman and supposedly never meant to see the light of day; a low-budget fare that for a while only existed in the form of low quality bootlegs.

The second—simply titled “Fantastic Four”—was released in 2005 and directed by Tim Story. Although met with mixed to negative reception, the movie was a massive hit, grossing $330.6 million against a $100 million dollar budget. Two years later, a sequel was released entitled “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer”, which was to be followed up with a third film and a spin-off that would center on the titular Silver Surfer. Met with similar reviews and somewhat of a box office success (grossing $290 million against a $130 million dollar budget).

The less-than stellar box office results from Rise of the Silver Surfer led to three things: the cancelation of the planned third film, the cancelation of the spin-off, and a years-long dormancy on the Fantastic Four property. During this time, the Marvel Cinematic Universe would come into existence and reshape the superhero genre forever—after which, the House of Mouse bought Marvel. Not wanting to be left out, Fox announced a reboot to the Fantastic Four, which then went silent for several more years.

During this silence, the rights to Daredevil were set to revert back to Marvel, who offered to extend their time hold onto them in exchange for the rights to use cosmic characters such as the aforementioned Silver Surfer and Galactus. Fox refused in what would become a long string of horrible decisions. Marvel on the other hand went on to make the critically acclaimed Netflix television series “Daredevil”.

As for those other horrible decisions, they tie into today’s focus: 2015’s Fant4stic; a movie whose quality can be summed up by just calling it Fant4stic.

Top 20 Worst Creepypastas: Part 2

This was meant to come out weeks ago. Life happens though. A special thanks to my friend James for editing this entry and the previous one by the way. You rock.