Need a Steampunk Fix?

Check out Franklyn, the directorial debut of Gerald McMorrow.



Franklyn is the mind-tripping tale of Emilia, Milo and Peter - three lost souls in present day London who are about to be thrown together when masked vigilante Jonathan Preest crosses over from his Steampunk dimension of Meanwhile City to their world. The story leaves a couple of loose ends dangling and doesn't always make total sense, but the sets in Meanwhile City are gorgeously, darkly Steampunkian, reminiscent of such films as Dark City and Hellboy, with a dash of Watchmen thrown into the plot.

"Did You Know?" Part 2 - fact or fiction?

Did you know... In Czechoslovakia, there is a church that has a chandelier made out of human bones. 

The sound of bells drives away demons because they're afraid of the loud noise. When a bell rings, a new angel has received his wings.

 A bird in the house is a sign of a death. If a robin flies into a room through a window, death will shortly follow.

 If you get a chill up your back or goosebumps, it means that someone is walking over your grave. Light candles on the night after November 1. One for each deceased relative should be placed in the window in the room where death occurred. 

You must hold your breath while going past a cemetery or you will breathe in the spirit of someone who has recently died. If a clock which has not been working suddenly chimes, there will be a death in the family. You will have bad luck if you do not stop the clock in the room where someone dies.

 If a woman is buried in black, she will return to haunt the family. If a dead person's eyes are left open, he'll find someone to take with him. Mirrors in a house with a corpse should be covered or the person who sees himself will die next.

 If you dream of death it's a sign of a birth, if you dream of birth, it's a sign of death.

 If you touch a loved one who has died, you won't have dreams about them A person who dies on Good Friday will go right to heaven. A person who dies at midnight on Christmas Eve will go straight to heaven because the gates of heaven are open at that time. All windows should be opened at the moment of death so that the soul can leave. The soul of a dying person can't escape the body and go to heaven if any locks are locked in the house. If the left eye twitches there will soon be a death in the family. If a dead person's eyes are left open, he'll find someone to take with him.

 Funerals on Friday portend another death in the family during the year. It's bad luck to count the cars in a funeral cortege. It's bad luck to meet a funeral procession head on. Thunder following a funeral means that the dead person's soul has reached heaven. Nothing new should be worn to a funeral, especially new shoes. Pointing at a funeral procession will cause you to die within the month Pregnant women should not attend funerals.

 If the person buried lived a good life, flowers will grow on the grave. If the person was evil, weeds will grow.

 If a mirror in the house falls and breaks by itself, someone in the house will die soon. 

 A white moth inside the house or trying to enter the house means death.

 If 3 people are photographed together, the one in the middle will die first.

 If 13 people sit down at a table to eat, one of them will die before the year is over.

 Dropping an umbrella on the floor means that there will be a murder in the house. 

"Did You Know?" Interesting Facts About Cemeteries.

 Do you know the difference between a coffin, a casket and a sarcophagus? 

 It's the shape!

 A coffin is wider at the shoulders, narrower at the head and feet.  A coffin is rectangular and a sarcophagus is more molded into the shape of  the human body and often had a portrait of the deceased painted on the lid.   Based on a standard grave size of 3' x 8', one acre of land will provide enough  space for 1,815 graves.   The typical iconography for Faith (cross), Hope (anchor), and Charity (mother  and child) are among the most commonly used Victorian funerary symbols.  Even groupings of three, such as three steps into a chapel or mausoleum,  or tiers on a monument, may signify this most favored symbolism of heavenly  apiration. The upward pointing obelisk (another popular monument style) will  often have a three layer base.  

  The custom of shutting the eyes of the deceased is believed to have begun  this way, done in an attempt to close a 'window' from the living world to the  spirit world. Covering the face of the deceased with a sheet comes from  pagan beliefs that the spirit of the deceased escaped through the mouth.    In some cultures, the home of the deceased was burned or destroyed to  keep his spirit from returning; in others the doors were unlocked and windows  were opened to ensure that the soul was able to escape.  In 19th century Europe and America the dead were carried out of the house  feet first, in order to prevent the spirit from looking back into the house and  beckoning another member of the family to follow him. Mirrors were also  covered, usually with black crepe, so the soul would not get trapped and not  be able to pass to the other side. Family photographs were also sometimes  turned face-down to prevent any of the close relatives and friends of the  deceased from being possessed by the spirit of the dead.   Some cultures took their fear of ghosts to an extreme. The Saxons of early  England cut off the feet of their dead so the corpse would be unable to walk.  Some aborigine tribes took the even more extreme step of cutting off the  head of the dead, thinking this would leave the spirit too busy searching for  his head to worry about the living.    

The use of tombstones may go back to the belief that ghosts could be  weighed down. Mazes found at the entrance to many ancient tombs are  thought to have been constructed to keep the deceased from returning to  the world as a spirit, since it was believed that ghosts could only travel in  a straight line. Some people even considered it necessary for the funeral  procession to return from the graveside by a different path from the one  taken in with the deceased, so that the departed's ghost wouldn't be able  to follow them home.    Some of the rituals which we now practice as a sign of respect to the  deceased, may also be rooted in a fear of spirits. Beating on the grave,  the firing of guns, funeral bells, and wailing chants were all used by some  cultures to scare away other ghosts at the cemetery.   In many cemeteries, the vast majority of graves are oriented in such a  manner that the bodies lie with their heads to the West and their feet to  the East. This very old custom appears to originate with the Pagan sun  worshippers, but is primarily attributed to Christians who believe  that the final summons to Judgment will come from the East.

  Did you know...  In 1785, the city of Paris removed bones from cemeteries to ease the  overflow of dead people. They took these bones and stacked them in  tunnels now known as the Catacombs. You can visit these tunnel  attractions and work your way along long corridors, which are stacked  with skulls and bones.  

 What's the difference between a cemetery and a graveyard?

  Answer:  A  graveyard  is  always  adjacent  to  and  part  of  a  church.

Ghost of a Man's Mother Walks the Hallway at Night

This video footage was recorded by a home surveillance camera in the hopes of explaining some rather strange noises. A ghostly figure was caught on tape, which the owner of the home believes is the ghost of his deceased mother, who used to live in the house. Do you believe it?

Watch it here.

Happy Thanksgiving

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Opens here Christmas Day.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a fantasy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam and Charles McKeown. The film follows the leader of a travelling theatre troupe who, having made a deal with the Devil, takes audience members through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations.

Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits, and Heath Ledger star in the film, though Ledger's death one-third of the way through filming caused production to be temporarily suspended.Ledger's role was recast with Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell portraying transformations of Ledger's character Tony as he travels through a dream world.

In the present day, immortal thousand-year-old Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) leads a travelling theatre troupe—including a sleight of hand expert, Anton (Andrew Garfield), and a dwarf, Percy (Verne Troyer)—that offers audience members a chance to go beyond reality through a magical mirror in his possession. Parnassus had been able to guide the imagination of others through a deal with the Devil (Tom Waits), who now comes to collect on the arrangement, targeting the doctor's daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole). The troupe, which is joined by a mysterious outsider named Tony (portrayed by Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell), embark through parallel worlds to rescue the girl.

Ghost Spotted on Side of the Road

A very interesting story. A couple sees a woman lying on the side of the road and reports it to the police. When they come to investigate - there is no body. What happens next is crazy!! Check out the video here.

Top 5 Ghost Tours

This article from howstuffworks.com has some good suggestions for your next ghost hunting vacation! http://science.howstuffworks.com/top-5-ghost-tours.htm

Famous Prostitute's Gravestone Deemed Too "Slutty"

The 77-year-old artist Tomi Ungerer’s parting gift to his friend Domenica Niehoff was to be a gravestone featuring two ample pink marble boulders in homage to her famously top-heavy figure. But those responsible for the Garden of Women cemetery, resting place of Hamburg’s most famous women, turned his design down, the paper reported.

Ungerer, who declared his interest in designing her gravestone immediately after her death, reacted bitterly to the decision.

“Domenica would have liked my design. She was not ashamed of herself,” he said.

Ungerer and Niehoff were friends for decades, and even shared a flat for a while in 1984. He published drawings of Niehoff and her colleagues in a book entitled “Guardian Angels of Hell” at the time.

But the cemetery officials are not alone in criticising Ungerer’s memorial. Photographer Günther Zint, another friend of Niehoff, told the newspaper, “There was a bit of a debate among her friends whether Tomi needed to emphasise her breasts like that. They were after all a bane of her life.”

Niehoff, who gained fame for advocating the rights of sex workers in the 70s and 80s, died at age 63 in February 2009.

Originally from Cologne, Niehoff lived through drugs, child prostitution and desperate attempts to get out of the sex trade. She grew up in an orphanage before slipping into prostitution, when she married a brothel owner, who committed suicide ten years later.

She worked as a prostitute in Munich and Hamburg and had her own brothel before she began to push for the legalisation of prostitution in Germany in the 1980s. She then became a social worker to help women to get off the street.

Wisconsin Death Trip

I was given a copy of this book many years ago. It remains a classic of sorts for those interested in postmortem photography and obscure history. Here is but one documentary available about the book and photographs. The book has also been made into a movie.

Wisconsin Death Trip is a non-fiction book by Michael Lesy, first published in 1973. It has been adapted into a film.

The book is based on a collection of late 19th century photographs by Jackson County, Wisconsin photographer Charles Van Schaick, mostly in the city of Black River Falls, and local news reports from the same period. It emphasizes the harsh aspects of Midwestern rural life under the pressures of crime, disease, mental illness, and urbanization.

The film, which was directed by James Marsh and starred Marcus Monroe, was released in 2000. In a docudrama style, and shot entirely in black-and-white (except for contrasting sequences of modern life in the area, in color), it combined re-enactments of some of the events described in the book with a voice-over narration by Ian Holm. Its visual style was intended to carry the content of the film - as Marsh said:"I wanted to convey in the film the real pathos contained in a four line newspaper report that simultaneously records and dismisses the end of someone’s life"