Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Blood versus cemetery: Texas Gothic

A small Texan town displayed a touch of that state's flair for the Gothic, when some Farmersville citizens threatened to drown a cemetery in blood.

This wasn't just any cemetery, but one local Muslims would run and staff.  And not just any blood, but pigs' blood, so as to offend that religion's sensibilities.

Because, as several Farmersvillians observed,

"It is my duty and my right to warn when there is a danger," said one resident during the 30-minute public comment portion...."It's going to be a great big issue and it's going to kill Farmersville," said another.

The non-Muslim sensibilities were certainly grim:

“When somebody dies they bury them at that time. They don’t know whether they were shot, diseased or anything else. All they do is wrap them in a sheet from the grave and bury them,” Troy Gosnell told the local CBS station.

Patricia Munroe voiced fears that local drinking water could be polluted.

“We used to grow onions here. We sure enough don’t want to be growing bodies,” said another resident, Mont Hendrick. [emphases added]

One local offered a different Gothic approach:

Feelings ran high at a town meeting earlier this week, where direct action was proposed to prevent the Muslims pressing ahead with the project.

Take and dump pig’s blood and put pig’s heads on a post so they won’t buy the land,” one resident said.

Nobody seems to have taken that resident up on his or her plan.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

Save Tales To Terrify

Tales To Terrify is one of the best horror podcasts out there.  Ever since they launched in January 2012 hosts Larry Santoro (RIP) and Stephen Kilpatrick have produced 183 shows.   The content includes classic horror and current tales, ranging from poems to short stories, novellas to nonfiction audio essays on the horror genre and reviews.

But now Tales To Terrify is in trouble.  Financial trouble.  They need to pay for the usual podcast stuff (hosting, bandwidth) plus rates for writers.  If people don't make sacrifices, this fine and scary neighborhood of the District of Wonders could simply cease.

So please contribute to the TTT coffers.  Fill up their unnatural kitty.  Stuff their muttering dungeon will your ill-gotten gains.  Only flinging lucre will keep this monster at bay.

Taxidermied hybrid visions or nightmares?

When is the connection between human and animal disturbing?  Kate Clark uses taxidermy to explore than intersection, and National Geographic isn't sure if the results are terrifying or thoughtful.

This is not in an effort to create a creature from fantasy or nightmares, but rather to confront the viewer with mankind’s innate connection with the animal kingdom by evoking empathy, curiosity, and, sometimes, discomfort.

(thanks to Thomas "will never sleep again" Burkdall)

Death by Xbox

Snopes reports on a fun scary digital technology hoax involving a fatal Xbox One console:

According to reports, the Xbox One forcefully ejected a disc, slicing the teens throat.

According to authorities, Davenport was killed when his Xbox One malfunctioned, causing the system to eject a disc at a high rate of speed, striking the teen in the throat.

 

Creepy clown invades a Chicago cemetery

The creepy clown invasion reached Chicago this month, as a solitary clown snuck into a closed-down cemetery, then posed for a horrified onlooker.

Julia Graham and her husband spotted a strange figure in shiny pants scaling a 7-foot-tall fence at Rosehill Cemetery around 10 p.m...

"I just think it’s creepy and wrong," Graham says.

When crime turns to horror: Arizona Gothic

In Phoenix, Arizona, an apartment dweller attempted a good dead, only to crash into a horror story:

A male neighbor knocked on the door of the apartment to check on the 43-year-old suspect, whom he hadn't seen since the day before. When the man, whose name was not immediately released, answered the door, his left arm was severed at the elbow and his left eyeball was missing.

The man then realized he was in a Gothic story (especially when he "could see that the apartment's floors and walls were covered in blood") and acted with remarkable genre savvy ("immediately contacted authorities").

The next protagonists were the police, who took the story further:

When officers arrived, they detained the suspect and entered the apartment. There, they found the Heisch's decapitated body inside a walk-in closet. Two dead dogs were also discovered inside the residence...

The suspect spoke with police officers outside the apartment and indicated that he "killed three family members," Crump said. It was unknown if the suspect was referring to the Heisch and the dogs or other relatives, but police are checking on other family members.

Then comes a forensic horror question: "Officers saw several knives in the residence, and it remains unknown which were used during the slaying and self-mutilation."

All violent crime has Gothic potential, but some cases really are ambitious.

 

Things to do with creepy dolls

Let's say you have a disturbing doll.  What can be done with it?  Mental Floss offers sixteen - count 'em, 16 - excellent uses for creepy dolls.

For example,

or

(thanks to Gabor Por)

Still more creepy dolls

Shannon Diane offers a fine selection of very creepy dolls, reborn dolls deliberately created for terrifying effect.

On creepy dolls: Smithsonian investigates

What makes dolls creepy? The Smithsonian has a good essay exploring the many ways.  From Little Talky Tina to Hoffmann's "The Sandman", reborn dolls to Chucky, uncanny valley to Barbie, Linda Rodriguez McRobbie does a fine job.

(via MetaFilter)

Fearing the networked car

Here's another little story about Internet of Things fear, well titled "Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It".

As the two hackers remotely toyed with the air-conditioning, radio, and windshield wipers, I mentally congratulated myself on my courage under pressure. That’s when they cut the transmission.

Immediately my accelerator stopped working. As I frantically pressed the pedal and watched the RPMs climb, the Jeep lost half its speed, then slowed to a crawl. This occurred just as I reached a long overpass, with no shoulder to offer an escape. The experiment had ceased to be fun.

The attackers also figured out how to turn off the brakes.

How did they do it?

All of this is possible only because Chrysler, like practically all carmakers, is doing its best to turn the modern automobile into a smartphone. Uconnect, an Internet-connected computer feature in hundreds of thousands of Fiat Chrysler cars, SUVs, and trucks, controls the vehicle’s entertainment and navigation, enables phone calls, and even offers a Wi-Fi hot spot. And thanks to one vulnerable element, which Miller and Valasek won’t identify until their Black Hat talk, Uconnect’s cellular connection also lets anyone who knows the car’s IP address gain access from anywhere in the country. “From an attacker’s perspective, it’s a super nice vulnerability,” Miller says.

This could foreshadow a spate of horror stories.  Think about how Americans see cars as mobile homes and/or expressions of personal strength and independence.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)