Upon first entering my home, many will find my selection of art rather strange, or even lacking a general theme or genre. Among the paintings that adorn the walls, you’ll see everything from reprints of classical pieces, to original works by various artists depicting grand sailing vessels and epic battles, modern impressionist pieces, wildlife scenes, and even faerie gatherings.
That’s right, my living room features a rather large painting where a group of faeries are gathered around a small pond, which I’ve monuted just adjacent to the entryway. What is less obvious to most about the purpose of this image (aside from a possible interest in faeries?) is that it is actually an original painting my mother, a very talented artist, procured more than a decade ago. The painting was featured in the family home for a number of years, until my mother eventually decided to ask if I would care to feature it on my wall for a while. Thus, the painting and its faerie folk now take residence within my living room.
So while the focus of my interest doesn’t have to do with faeries in particular, there are a number of classic fantasy images that I’ve nonetheless taken a liking to over the years, primarily because they have a slightly creepy feel to them. Edward Robert Hughes’ famous “Oh What’s That in the Hollow” (featured above) has been a personal favorite for a number of years, ever since I bought a paperback edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that featured the image on its cover. While it may not be that the image depicts an actual vampire, the slightly macabre overtone of the man with thorns and dog-roses growing over him did serve as a nod at a classic poem by Christina Rossetti called ‘Amor Mundi’, published in 1865, which features the lines, “Oh, what’s that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow? Oh, that’s a thin dead body which waits the eternal term’.” With it’s haunting undertones that bear the mild musk of death, apparently the publishers must have thought it would also serve as a good representation for Dracula, too.
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Hit-and-run automobile accidents are reported every day in the U.S., involving circumstances where one motorist (usually at fault for a collision) decides to flee the scene, rather than to stick around and face the consequences of their actions.
The same sort of thing appears to have happened recently in a Washington D.C. area suburb, but not just between two motorists. In fact, an entire block’s worth of parked vehicles have been mysteriously destroyed by something described as “very powerful,” the likes of which reporters on the scene said was, “unlike anything they have ever seen outside of a serious wreck on the highway.” The initial story, reported by area news station WUSA9, can be found here.
Why should this story constitute anything remotely Fortean, one may ask? Indeed, the likely scenario we’re faced with involved some motorist–believed to have been an intoxicated one–going full-throttle down the street, losing control or purposefully slamming repeatedly into a number of vehicles, and then disappearing. But as photos already indicate (available by clicking here), this individual managed to do a tremendous amount of damage… and at present, no suspect has been named. What kind of circumstances could have resulted in localized destruction on such a massive scale?
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According to a recent article featured at the Science Daily website, there are links between those who have musical abilities and reading ability. “New research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions shows how auditory working memory and musical aptitude are intrinsically related to reading ability,” the article reads. According to the study, there is “a biological basis for this link.”
Still, we can’t deny that there are perhaps certain factors involving what certain people choose to read, or are perhaps exposed to otherwise, and how it promotes their abstract thinking and intellectual development. To consider this possibility on a personal note, I recall that while reading, art and musical ability were my strongest points beginning at an early age, I was also exposed to a variety of material that the average grade school students weren’t aware of (and perhaps you can guess what kinds of subjects I’m hinting at…)
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One of the more terrifying and strange aspects of Forteana and the unexplained ongoing today relates to the stories of so-called “Black Eyed Children.” Indeed, this subject has seen a lot of press in the last few years, thanks to writers and researchers like Jason Offutt, Nick Redfern, and a few others. However, despite the appearance of often being a more recent phenomenon, there are also many aspects of this ongoing mystery that have associations with much earlier times. One researcher who has begun to draw such parallels to earlier reports of beings with hollowed-out or blackened eyes is Gralien Report correspondent and resident “Historian of Obscurities” Vance Pollock.
“The terrifying image of the black-eyed children first called to mind an encounter sometimes related to episodes of astral projection or out-of-body experiences,” Vance writes. “I have two accounts written by authors who both lived at some point in Asheville, North Carolina,” alluding first to none other than William Dudley Pelley, a radical Nazi supporter (who eventually served time in prison for speaking in favor of the Pearl Harbor Bombing) and prominent figure in the early twentieth century spiritualist movement. Indeed, what Pelley describes sounds very similar to a black-eyed being of the modern era, though the circumstances under which the encounter took place are far stranger even than those weirdest among the conventional reports today.
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