Decemystery (2024) 22: The Day the Earth Screamed

 

Okay, let’s see. I’ve got Queen playing. It’s a quarter after noon. I’ve barely eaten. I have a bit of chocolate milk and Pepsi…

And it’s the first day of December.

For the sixth time around—five if you wish to count the Decemystery duology as one entity (as I’ve said in the past: I don’t)—writing Decemystery has dragged into December. This series has siphoned my love for the final month of the year because of how often I find myself looking at the clock while cursing my brain for being as metaphorically blended as a milkshake.

Lucky for you and me, dear reader, I happen to love writing, so I’m not upset. I’m only deeply pissed off on a very personal level that I don’t wish to discuss because that anger is between me and something that was outside of my control. All I’ll say is that it’s like being mad at the weather—if the weather were controlled by the biggest jerk you knew.

Anyway, what does that have to do with today’s write-up? Well, oddly enough, quite a lot. When I began working on Decemystery 2024 back in mid-August, I knew that it was going to carry into December. The only way it wouldn’t is if I approached it half-heartedly. That wasn’t something I intended to do. I did that in 2020, and it remains one of my greatest regrets because I think the quality of most of the write-ups is horrendous.

However, I had a contingency plan for this year, and it was similar to the one I had for last year. That was to make the final stretch of stories simple; they’re ones that I knew I could cover without much trouble. If anything had to be changed, I had even easier ones to fall back on (which, as of writing, I may have to do, albeit begrudgingly).

That brings us to today’s write-up. I consider it a part of that contingency plan. It’s simple, straightforward, and hails from the Conspiracy Iceberg. It’s also one that I don’t believe was ever considered for last year. If it was, I have no way to find out since I deleted the finalized schedules for both Decemysterys. How fitting that the plans I had for a blog dedicated to mysteries are becoming mysteries themselves.

Oh well, I digress. It’s time for the fourth Conspiracy Iceberg entry to be examined, and it’s one of the best-named out there. It’s known as The Day the Earth Screamed, and it’s appropriately named because all I want to do right now is scream. God, please, let 2025 be the year I can spend this month in peace.

Decemystery (2024) 17: The 2023 Beverwijk Alien Abduction

 

When I was 13 years old, I remember going to see a movie. I can’t remember which, but I recall getting a trailer for a film called “The Fourth Kind,” starring Mila Jovovich (who was in those really schlocky Resident Evil movies). She played a psychologist named “Abigal Tyler,” whose patients all claim to see an owl—which I used as the header image for a write-up last year. This, of course, turns out to be incorrect; the “owl” is an extraterrestrial that abducts them.

While I can’t remember what movie I saw the trailer in front of, I recall it scaring me. Yet, I don’t know what caused me to be afraid. I think it was the eerie shot of the owl getting closer to the camera and slowly turning into a Grey alien. Either way, it ended up being seared into my mind. Thanks, Universal Pictures!

Anyway, I didn’t watch the film until 2018—nine years after it was released. As it turns out, film critics aren’t always wrong; sometimes, they hit the nail on the head. The movie wasn’t very good. It was boring, uninteresting, and wasn’t scary.

The movie also had a lot of editing choices that actively made watching the thing awkward, such as one instance where there are four separate shots going on at once: two reenactments and two “archived recordings.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go watch an episode of the show “24” and wait for an interlude where the clock is ticking and four scenes of different characters play out on the screen. The movie does that, and it’s horrifically executed.

Anyway, why did I bring this up today? Well, it’s because I’ve never been a believer in alien abductions—I said as much five days ago, and I’ve stated the same thing prior to that. Despite that belief, I find them to be one of the most interesting bits of UFO lore out there. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to watch The Fourth Kind in the first place. It’s also why I ended up watching “Dark Skies,” which you should watch if you want to watch a movie about alien abduction that doesn’t suck. Seriously, I was surprised since I thought the trailer was terrible.

I digress, though. As I was putting Decemystery 2024 back together, it occurred to me that I hadn’t covered a story about alien abduction since 2019—back when I covered the story of Alan Godfrey, a British police officer who claimed he was abducted by aliens. It’s a pretty baffling case that, to this day, I can’t make heads or tales of, and I need to rewrite it.

With the knowledge that I haven’t covered anything related to an alien abduction in half a decade on my mind, I decided that I’d make amends for that by covering not one but two stories related to it. Today’s the first one, and it’s a story dedicated to a Dutch friend of mine. If she happens to dislike this story, I’ll be almost as disappointed as I was when watching The Fourth Kind.

That said, I think it’s about high time we take a trip back to Europe to explore the realm of UFOs and aliens once more. Come along, dear reader; it’s time to examine the tale of The 2023 Beverwijk Alien Abduction.

Decemystery (2024) 5: The Triangle Man

 

When it comes to the realm of the paranormal, I’m far from the most well-educated person on Earth. Sure, I’ve heard plenty of ghost stories. I know the basics of ghost lore—to some degree, anyway. I know that ghosts aren’t corporeal beings, that they leave behind cold spots, and that they can move stuff. Also, they’re prone to responding to people knocking on walls. I have no idea why, but I think that’s funny.

I learned the basics of ghosts as a child, though, and I’ve since forgotten a lot of other things that would likely be useful when writing about them. I could go back and relearn them, but I’m lazy. Yes, that’s really my excuse. How professional of me.

In recent years, my interest in it has waned considerably. While I still enjoy a good ghost story, I feel like they’re largely the same. A house or some other location where stuff moves around and footsteps are heard when there’s only one person home. If you’re lucky, the person saw an apparition.

That level of sameness makes them a drag to cover. There’s only so much I can handle before I find the energy and love that I pour into writing turning into a sense of obligation. That, for me, is one of the worst feelings in the world because it leads to the driest and blandest write-ups possible. The last thing I want to do is post something that was an obligation and not something that I believe could be enjoyed by the folks who visit this blog.

Those reasons are why I seldom cover paranormal cases. While some can argue that UFO sightings are the same, I find UFOs to be a lot more interesting. Also, there’s a lot more fun to be had in the absurdity of cases about enormous UFOs being seen by one person. To paraphrase CinemaSins, “Nobody who watches the sky for a living saw this thing.”

That said, there are occasionally cases that pique my interest enough to where I need to make an exception. Today marks one of those occasions because it is, without a doubt, one of the most unsettling ghost stories I’ve read in a long time. I mentioned it in yesterday’s Decemystery entry, and I’m going to give it the attention it demands today. This, dear reader, is the disturbing tale of The Triangle Man!

Decemystery (2022.3) 31: That Time Professor Oak Kidnapped A Child

 

Content warning: this write-up contains mentions of child sexual abuse.

This month has been filled with an absolutely massive amount of weirdness. From space penguins to vampiric caterpillars and tongue monsters to dancing bulls, this December takes the cake as the strangest of them all. Though, as is the case with Decemystery, I’ve saved the oddest story for last. For the capstone of Decemystery 2022.3, I have whatever you can call this story.

Despite being a rather harmless series on the surface, Pokémon has had a bizarrely large amount of controversy surrounding it throughout the years. While nowadays, it’s primarily criticized for the lackluster graphics and, in the case of the two most recent releases, polish, its early days had some other criticisms. From one side, you had PETA lambasted it for animal cruelty. On the other side, you had some religious groups accuse it of being Satanic for teaching evolution.

Today’s story will take us back in time to that time period, a time when video games had controversies that didn’t involve loot boxes and microtransactions. No, it was a simpler time. So to round off this Decemystery, let’s discuss That Time Professor Oak Kidnapped A Child. This one’s going to be a doozy.

Decemystery (2022.3) 1: The TED Talk "There Is Nothing" Incident

 

Hello there, dear reader! I have no real idea whether or not you will have read any sort of update by the time you’re reading this. If you are, then you likely know what my plans are for this year. If you haven’t read an update, then there’s a good chance that I never bothered to post a single thing the entire year (which likely has made my blog look like it was abandoned). Now, why don't I post an update? Well, I’m scared of making a promise and breaking it—again.

So, for the sake of providing one before we get into the fun, allow me to explain something. Brain fog sucks. Brain fog that lasts an entire year really sucks. Brain fog that stops you from doing the one thing that you believe you’re good at really, really sucks. Indeed, that’s pretty much the one and only reason that I never posted anything last year (a year which I had hoped would be my biggest and best year to date). Thanks, COVID! You robbed me of a year of my life.

Anyway, because of that, there was no Decemystery 2022. However, I’m nothing if not committed to saying that I’ve done a Decemystery each and every year. So, for this year, there will be not one but two Decemystery series! The first will be known as Decemystery 2022.3 and will be posted at 6:00 a.m. Eastern time. The second will be Decemystery 2023 and will be posted an hour later. This is the inaugural story of the first of those two. Also, I hope you don’t hate me for not posting anything of merit last year (besides a review of a really awful horror film). If you do hate me, all I can say is I’m sorry, and I deeply regret not posting more updates last year to let you all know what my health status was.

And then, immediately after writing this part of the introduction, I decided to post an update on the blog to alert people I was writing again. Why didn’t I delete this part? Because I wanted to pad the word count. No, really, that’s the only reason. :^)

So, confession time: I’ve never seen The Matrix. I know, that’s probably the worst thing to ever be uttered by any human being, but it’s true. Though I haven’t seen it, I am still very much aware of a great many things about it. For example, I know that Keanu Reeves starred in it, I know of bullet time, I know of the red and blue pills (take both pills at once, anons), and I know there was no spoon.

Now that I have confessed to my greatest cinematic sin and every Matrix fan is gone and preparing their cat-o’-nine-tails for my inevitable torturing, allow me to get this ball a-rollin’. I want to hone in on the concept of there being “no spoon.” I’m sure that most—if not all—of you are familiar with the “simulation theory.” If you aren’t, it’s the theory that reality is just some, well, simulation. Basically, we live in The Sims. Truly, this is a fate worse than Alt+F4.

The simulation theory is a controversial one, to be sure. It has its proponents and its dissidents, and whether the former spend their days trying their best to activate cheat codes within the hypothetical simulation is up for debate. Should any succeed, I hope they use those cheat codes for good and also help me get back the time I wasted watching Pride & Prejudice & Zombies in theaters.

Anyway, let’s get back on track. All of this rambling does have a point, and it’s one that I’ve struggled to make for quite some time. You see, I’m not a believer in the simulation theory, nor am I fond of it. Despite that, I never try to let my personal views or beliefs dictate what I write about or how I write about something. That doesn’t always end up being the case, though; sometimes, my personal beliefs end up taking over and end up with something extraordinarily narrow-minded or biased. However, in those cases, it’s usually something that I believe isn’t going to upset a lot of people—barring Nibiru (which I would like to one day do a rewrite on since I think my biased views on that make it an unpleasant read).

So, what am I trying to get at? Well, at the time of this writing (which is in January of this year), I’m finally getting back into writing after close to a year of not having done any. As such, I wanted to start off with something that I would consider easy, and today’s story fit the bill for me. Coincidentally, it’ll also be an exercise in me not inserting any personal beliefs or biased comments.

That story hails from one of the many, many Conspiracy Theory Icebergs. Known as the TED Talk “There Is Nothing” Incident, this is something I would expect to find on a creepypasta website. That would actually be preferable, given how absurdly difficult it was to find anything on this story, but I digress. This is something I’ve had on my radar for a few years now, and I finally wish to cover it today. So come along, dear reader. It’s time for Decemystery 2022.3 to begin, and it’s time to find out if there really is anything to the story that claims there really is nothing.

What Could Have Been: World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor

Regarded by some as the worst expansion in the then ten year history of World of Warcraft history, Warlords of Draenor had a development that saw an incredible amount of content get scrapped due to story rewrites, time constraints, fan backlash, and a lack of direction the likes of which the game wouldn't see until the 2018 expansion, Battle For Azeroth.