Things that are Eerie 1 Log Out | Topics | Search
Moderators | Edit Profile

RAMSEY CAMPBELL » Discussion » Things that are Eerie 1 « Previous Next »

Author Message
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2019 - 10:25 am:   

https://youtu.be/3FxA2pELtIw
Thanks to Craig for this.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2019 - 10:29 am:   

Is it possible to be an eeriness connoisseur? I feel like I've become one. What even IS eeriness, though? Sadness mixed with fear? I know my dog even senses it, so I know it's not just us. I see it in none-eerie things, though, I know that. Is it the dreamlike in the every day?
I'll get back after a think.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2019 - 12:56 pm:   

I think the new is eerie. And the recently old. Like Proto said, recent nostalgia.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.199
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2019 - 05:41 pm:   

Oh I like this.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.205
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2019 - 06:07 pm:   

Is this right?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2019 - 06:55 pm:   

That's great. We might be the black nose in Mickey's face.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2019 - 06:57 pm:   

Also - IS nostalgia an emotion?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.186
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2019 - 11:21 pm:   

Formally it's defined as a longing for home, so I suppose by definition it is.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Thursday, May 02, 2019 - 09:35 am:   

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=andoned+mall&&view=detail&mid=5EB04FBA448CE 5E4B6215EB04FBA448CE5E4B621&&FORM=VRDGAR
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Thursday, May 02, 2019 - 09:49 am:   

Not sure why I shared that. It's OTT. Eerie nibbles at the edges.
Or is it?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Monday, May 06, 2019 - 05:52 pm:   

Hotels always strike me as eerie. That same room shape, the sense of all the strangers being there but you never meet them, just hear them passing your room at night, like they stay inside their rooms until you've gone. Yet it's comforting; time always feels to stand still, it always feels like years that you are there and yet time isn't passing at all. Is there a possibility physics does not apply to hotels?

Or for that matter the backs of stores at retail parks? Overgrown with bushes and trees and soil covered in dead leaves. Wildlife is there, a thin path and a couple of doors. You go round the front and it's a huge toy store, nearly deserted, and there are toys from films not even out yet, and toys from films that are a few years old, but the toys of which feel unfamiliar, characters you don't remember. There are hardly any staff and there are the kind of ladders that are like steps that take you up to aeroplanes, lots of them, but no signs of work. It all feels like death, limbo, a huge epic film you don't remember coming out but is only a year or so old, like the Lost City of Z.

Maybe science does not apply to lost things, overlooked things, like in those two slit tests. Something that happens in that happens in all these liminal places, and when we pin down why it will cease to occur.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.33
Posted on Monday, May 06, 2019 - 06:55 pm:   

Maybe there's some kind of observer effect going on? Could be an interesting starting point for fiction.

The Lost City of Z. Wow, that was only from 2016 and it feels lost. One I reminded myself to see but never did. How odd these Marvel movies are going to look in the future. THIS was what people loved?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Tuesday, May 07, 2019 - 04:15 am:   

Ha! I'm not even sure I even remember The Lost City of Z! But I know that feeling intimately, Tony. The one movie that really struck it for me was, ironically, AMELIA, ten years ago now (!). I remember vividly going into a Blockbuster and seeing that DVD on the shelf - and being struck: I had literally erased this movie from my mind, that the ads kept pounding into us relentlessly only a few months before. But really, this applies to any old film now.

Do you have the equivalent out there of 7-11's, here? They're basically vice-stops - alcohol, tobacco, lottery tickets, used to be porno rags - and junk food, Slurpies, sundries, etc. Anyway, I've noticed now, ours started selling DVDs, but in tiny envelopes, sans any information - just the DVD, in an envelope, and you have to look at the actual DVD to get the title. And no, these aren't used or anything, they're clearly being packaged like this - they have some title to them, like, Lost Classics or somewhat. They should evoke an eerie feeling of sadness too, but somehow... they're fitting in a 7-11. They've finally found their proper place: just one more piece of junk to consume, at a reasonable rate.

Your observations on buildings brings to mind - not to high-brow this much, but Hegel expresses the ideal that we assume that objects outside ourself are passive, when really (he claims) they're as "active" as anything else. And it occurs to me... our 360 degree orbit of observation, at any given moment and in every given location - for all intents and purposes, 100% of the time - everything around us IS a "consciousness." That computer you're reading this very post on? Made by humans - humans with minds that created something to cast an aesthetic image on your mind, an image imagined (created) by another consciousness. Same with that lamp there - that rug there, styled and put down by humans - the walls - outside, the landscaping, the roads, the buildings... all erections of human consciousness and will that are forever radiating their creators' psyches to us at all times of the day, no matter where we go.

Only in nature - untouched by man - can we possibly escape this... but even there, the vegetation lets us see what it wants, and the landscape is an accident of other accidents - shifting land-masses, earthquakes, etc. Nothing is itself, itself - all is affected - we have no core originality, we are absolutely constructs of everything around us - there is no US, there is only - everything else.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Tuesday, May 07, 2019 - 04:18 am:   

Hearing that music yet again (up top)... it soothes, and disturbs, at once. That's hard to do!

I'm not sure how much money it would take to get me to wander around an empty mall, with that playing distantly in the background....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.164
Posted on Tuesday, May 07, 2019 - 10:24 am:   

I quite like the idea of phenomenology. I'm sure I'm misrepresenting it by saying it's the idea that we imbue life to things by focussing attention on them. This seems to be the opposite of what Hegel is saying?

I wish we had a 7-11, then we wouldn't have to queue behind people in ordinary supermarkets behind other people's vices. It's mostly people buying booze, tobacco and scratch cards that hold up the queue I find.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Tuesday, May 07, 2019 - 11:03 am:   

I have seen the Lost Film of the Lost City of Z. It is largely pretty good, with some awe-inspiring scenes, but the ending left me very depressed and not likely to watch it again.
I think I'm with Hegel. And animism, which I think he's talking about. I once heard a thing about a child's graveyard in china where all the graves had toys on them, and that the toys had been held by the children (while still alive) and focussed on and loved, and that no-one could take them because they would turn on them. The philosophy behind it is that the more an object has to do with a person the more 'conscious' it becomes. It's like in witchcraft - they think the more handmade a thing is, the more life and power it has. They say the only thing incapable of life is plastic (me, I'm not sure about that, and can't let go of my plastic action figures). It's probably anthropomorphism, but...again to quote the witches, I don't care. Maybe things are conduits, vessels for feelings, and it's this we tune into?
Yes, we went walking along a very old long rail track (now just a soil path here Craig, and also eerily feeling haunted, as old rail tracks do) and were surrounded by woods and frields. It felt so calm, rejuvenating. We do not bicker out in the country.
As an aside, I've been seeing a lot of trees cut down near me and it really upsets me. A huge wood near us, we went in there the other week and acres of it had been felled and piled up in huge walls of wood. I almost wept.
I hear John Singleton died. I only saw moments of Boyz in the Hood but found it almost too moving and real. Lines from it get me angry. He says these 7/11s fuel alcohol and tobacco addiction and that you would never get them in the likes of Beverly Hills. That said, I once cycled to a faraway town and had to spend the night in a working men's hostel. It was the plainest room imaginable, but the place was friendly. The view was of a fire escape. Anyway, I had bad toothache and could barely sleep, but just after five o'clock I was able to get up and cross the street to a paper shop and buy some pain killers. I live in the country and could never do that there. This was amazing, the high life - I could have kissed the ground.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Wednesday, May 08, 2019 - 07:59 am:   

I'm hardly a Hegel scholar, Proto - I've been dipping in and out of him recently, and this notion I came across in his Logic. It seems ultimately he was trying to find the source of all thought/consciousness - read: reality itself. I guess, like any good philosopher.

It's so true! I live in Simi Valley, which has, oh I can count it... six 7-11s, but we also have about three more "quickie marts," virtually the same thing. Simi is a middle-class community (only recently becoming upper-); but nearby, next town over basically, is Westlake Village - a very hoity-toity upper-class community, where many celebrities live - and there isn't ONE of these in the entire sprawling area! Not one run-down area either, it's all pristine beauty - and no homeless people anywhere. That can't be an accident.

Funny, though, Tony - most of these very wealthy people in their very wealthy enclaves - some of them are (relatively) quite remote from city center - and it'd be just like you describe: if they needed aspirin, etc., they'd have a hell of a drive. Of course, they're super rich, so they have others do it for them - and now, with this whole "uber" model taking over everywhere, everyone can have anything delivered to their homes any time, day or night.

We're very near nature, and I rarely venture into it, the "woods" as you describe them, Tony... to my detriment. Used to so often, especially when I lived up north - into deep pine woods, up mountains, redwood forests... god, so long ago. Depressing how long it's been. And often when I went, I would feel equal parts exhilaration and terror - all nature telling me loudly I'm just today's annoying gnat upon their meaningless moment, the same one of such moment to myself. Awe and that feeling of tiny puniness in the face of relentless nature and time and the Universe - no one likes to take his vegetables, but maybe it's good to.

I sometimes spin a picture of "God" in my mind, as a mighty warrior spirit with this giant train of warrior angels and spirits, streaming across the skies in a grand pageant, completely unaware of my presence far, far below. You get one glimpse as the King passes by forever. And it's all somehow comforting - even being ignored like that, ever after, is comforting. Can't explain it, but it is.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Thursday, May 09, 2019 - 10:41 am:   

That description of the woods is very Algernon Blackwood, and yes, deep woods frighten me, too. Nothing to latch onto to find your way back.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Thursday, May 09, 2019 - 10:52 am:   

Some of these mean nothing to me, and you have to skip to the ones that mean something to you, but these things really chill me. Here's one at random.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSgDSuYrgug
It's that sound, that echo or 'reverb'. Just the memories.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Thursday, May 09, 2019 - 10:58 am:   

Also, films playing to empty theatres; as a teen, in one of my first jobs, working at a cinema, I once looked in to see Arthur in its last week playing to an empty theatre. I have no idea why, but it gave me real shudders seeing it, and even more shutting the door on it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Thursday, May 09, 2019 - 11:05 am:   

Old TV shows and themes.
For example;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07tYdd7drSE

So chilling to me I just had to switch off. Old NY in the background, old sunlight...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Thursday, May 09, 2019 - 05:21 pm:   

I find the Taxi theme less eerie, than just purely depressing somehow. It just makes my mood go straight to sadness, despair - the world is bleak and there's no hope left. Yes, what a cheery theme song! Who the f*** picked that?!?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Thursday, May 09, 2019 - 05:25 pm:   

Old production/video company logos are the scariest! And it's great to know we're not the only ones who think so, thanks to all the collections out there.

Going further down the rabbit hole - telephone recorded messages, I mean official ones from the phone company - egad! Terrifying! I've always thought so, since I was very young. "If you'd like to make a call, pleas hang up, and dial again...." The scratchiness over the vocals. Often she would follow with a mysterious code - "two N six," who the fuck knows what those meant. Horrifying all!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.100
Posted on Thursday, May 09, 2019 - 05:47 pm:   

I think the TAXI theme is one of the most perfect TV themes. Ever since you mentioned it weeks ago, Tony, it's been in my head. Initially they went with an upbeat comedy theme but it went with a realistic headlights through the rain thing, the dreams of these drivers.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Thursday, May 09, 2019 - 06:11 pm:   

I think that's why it affects me in odd ways. It gets deep, makes me sad in complicated ways. If I'm down, it makes me more down, if I'm OK it's lovely. I think I'm down right now, and it's coloring everything.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.124
Posted on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 12:53 am:   

I think its tone is gentle and sweet, fragile and sensitive.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 07:06 am:   

It's gentle, sure... but it's just hopelessly sad to me. The end credits are that way too: "Good night Mr. Walters", "Muh...." https://youtu.be/X0h34ECADiw Gawd, a couple of seconds there, and I feel down again - it's the lighting, his 70's outfit, the very interior of that building, etc. There's utter joyless-ness in all this - sorry, don't see the beauty.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 07:22 am:   

I'm pretty sure this is a faked call - someone created himself on his computer, or something like that. And yet, even knowing that... I wouldn't want to hear this late at night, all alone...https://youtu.be/iIw8cEFgtfo
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.150.214.76
Posted on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 08:05 am:   

This is creepy in that it's too banal to be fake.
Have you heard of number stations on short wave radios? Apparently used to send messages to spies? I have heard them - I bought a short wave radio because of the odd things I'd heard you could pick up on them. To hear them is unsettling because it makes you realize the weird conspiracy world you hear about might be real.
Short wave radios are weird, I have to say. It's like dreamworld on there. Like you're hearing sleeping people's thoughts.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.150.214.76
Posted on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 08:10 am:   

Those taxi end titles really did disturb me. It's the clash of the bittersweet music and the people dancing, having fun, then the surge up apposite logo music. And that Stonehenge sense of looking at a long gone world.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.124
Posted on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 11:21 am:   

Ha! Yes, end titles are another matter, and filming the taxi at night changes it completely. I do find those old style end credits that US comedy shows used to do vaguely depressing. They'd put credits over stills from the programe you just watched and you realised you just wasted 30 minutes of your life. Perhaps every new television should have a mirror built into it so you can see yourself watching television.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.150.214.76
Posted on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 12:03 pm:   

They made a series of it - Gogglebox, a show that if you watch a couple of episodes is fun, but anymore and you realize that it's that time wasting feeling quadrupled.
Know what saddens me, looking through old family photos. It's what you said about end credits, makes me feel the same. I wonder how the world must have felt like before nostalgia, recording things?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.150.214.76
Posted on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 04:02 pm:   

I'm having a panic attack because the window cleaners are here. Does anybody else get that?
I don't know why I said that.
I think artists struggle to capture what is going on in things like these end title scenes. It can't be recreated. Like I was starting to say, is there a degree where culture can make us too sad? Keep us tied to the past? But then, I once met a native American in the uk, a really nice young guy in a hostel. You know, one of these people you always remember. He showed me a necklace he was wearing; in it were hair and teeth of his his ancestors going back generations. He was able to tell me about each of them. Can we do that? I don't think so. My past is a blank. But I BET this guy does not get saddened by the end of Taxi.
I don't know what I'm going on about anymore, other than I'm clouded by nostalgia for things I never personally experienced, besides the things like toys and tv shows that I did. I sometimes think we are swimming in reminders - I long to get rid of everything, live like a dog wandering the land.
I had a bad day yesterday, all kinds of bad emotional things. My dogs pulled me over and broke my glasses - breaking glasses is a real costly panic! - and it really hurt, put me in shock actually. But today my bigger of the two dogs did a thing he never did while we are out, and he looked back at me and really looked into my eyes, and walked back to me and rubbed himself against me. Do dogs know us? Can they read us?
I digress. I just need to talk.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.31
Posted on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 08:10 pm:   

Take things one step at a time, Tony. All's well.

That's an interesting observation about the window cleaners, though. What a great short that would make. Reminds me of a Ramsey Campbell scene in I think "The Franklyn Diaries"(?) where someone reports a head floated around the outside of his house looking in and followed him from room to room. Brr!

I noticed that a Dartmoor ghost got a mention on Have I Got News for You recently. The hair hands. Great name.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Tuesday, May 14, 2019 - 06:01 pm:   

Okay - these "window cleaners." Is this a normal sort of thing over there in the UK? I mean, do you normally have people come to your homes and clean windows? Or maybe you're talking about living in high-rises? Out here, only the very wealthy would ever have their windows cleaned by outsiders - or the occasional business. It's a total luxury in America. Trivial aside, but well... had to ask.

I agree, Tony, I think - taking as a sample - that ending/opening to TAXI is just affecting to a few, and for specific reasons - I'll bet, for example, I could show it to SO MANY PEOPLE I know, and they'd shrug or scratch their heads. I decided one day at work to switch the streaming music away from the usual Beiber/Grande/etc. to play the Herbie Hancock "Headhunters" - it took two minutes for one of the young girls (19) to demand I change it because it gave her very unsettling feelings, it depressed her, etc. There's no way this girl could have been familiar with this album before! But it triggered something in her that is totally askew to what I would consider the rational response to such music (falling somewhere in the range between enjoyment to boredom). For some reason, Tony, you and I (and maybe Proto here) respond similarly to the sadness of TAXI theme - probably associated memories, a big old tangle of them, is to blame.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Tuesday, May 14, 2019 - 06:05 pm:   

Tony, our minds are just various beakers of chemicals in a lab bubbling away, and sometimes one spills into another and causes a reaction. You're not panicked, you're not anything, but dealing with a chemical spill situation. You can step back and watch the liquids bubble and dry up and things return to normal. It has no affect upon anything.

Panic - fear. You know - and I'm being serious here, not making a joke - how many of our fears, are really fears... and not just our mind telling us it really really really really really really really really really really really really really doesn't want to do something?...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.145.158.154
Posted on Wednesday, May 15, 2019 - 11:11 am:   

It's the sound of the music...the style. I now find my tv theme cd hard to listen to because that world has gone. It just feels like innocence has died. Innocent AND intelligent? Could we be both?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Sunday, May 19, 2019 - 06:10 pm:   

I look at old sitcoms sometimes that run in rerun, and think about the audience of the time. I think... who the hell sat down each week to watch this?! Who made this their very own "must see TV"?!? I mean, "WKRP In Cincinatti" - gawd, what a dreary, sad, depressing world that is! The theme, the actors... their desperate attempt to seem (for the time) so cool, hip, with-it, man! It makes one nauseous, it brings up one's bile (to wax Nietzschean). It's increasingly the sheer inauthenticity of all these sitcoms, that make them seem so ancient and horrifying to touch again - like digging up a dead body and playing with it. They should be removed from memory, and the memory-hole salted.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.147.162
Posted on Sunday, May 19, 2019 - 07:08 pm:   

I think I have a very vague memory of WKRP and the episode ended so poignantly, so tragically, with someone whose job it was to add canned laughter to old episodes of M*A*S*H. That stuck with me ever since as a symbol of a moment when inauthenticity took over. But I might be confusing it with something else. We're talking decades ago.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.147.162
Posted on Sunday, May 19, 2019 - 07:09 pm:   

I didn't know that the laugh track was normal in the USA broadcasts. We didn't have it here. It ruins M*A*S*H.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02m7devejKI

"Those people are dead. They're still laughing, but they don't know it..." Brr!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.145.158.154
Posted on Sunday, May 19, 2019 - 07:18 pm:   

I sometimes think Facebook is canned life. Added to real life.
It sounds to me that sometimes though fake can be real. I watched The Searchers on bluray yesterday for the first time in decades, with my son. It had become a total horror film. And, while the reality it was presenting might not have been genuine, it rang true because everything in it dovetailed into belief. It believed ITSELF.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.145.158.154
Posted on Sunday, May 19, 2019 - 07:20 pm:   

I remember that think about dead laughter! Jesus. Maybe this is the reason all old stuff unnerves us? They're ghosts?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.139.125.18
Posted on Monday, May 20, 2019 - 12:24 pm:   

In an old Simpsons this week they had an audience sitting totally still, but with the sounds of laughter and applause over it. That really made me shudder.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Sunday, March 15, 2020 - 06:25 am:   

Theaters, scary... this beats 'em all, Tony:

https://youtu.be/rfLFCgBzmS4

The whole scene is distressing - but the scariest moment of all comes at 1:30-35, imho....

(not sure youtube links work over there in the UK - do they?)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.155.160.42
Posted on Sunday, March 15, 2020 - 09:17 am:   

That is pretty good.
I experienced this odd thing a couple of times going to the cinema through the day (my favourite time), the auditorium mostly empty, of someone say right at the front in the far left. A friend told me he'd witnessed the same thing. Drugs? Sleep? Who knows. It just stopped me relaxing. And one time there was a huge white inflatable figure from a pixar movie stood in the same place, just watching us.
But dead laughter does unnerved me. Always did. And old photos, there were boxfuls of old photos in a huge box I saw in a junk shop in Scotland, not even old. And near them a pile of wedding albums from maybe the forties or fifties. It's like we cut loose our previous generation so easily. It scares me because the underlying message is we don't much matter.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.80
Posted on Monday, March 16, 2020 - 11:50 pm:   

Great clip. Very Campbellian.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Monday, March 30, 2020 - 01:06 am:   

I have wondered if photos aren't an example of humanity coming up with something amazing and innovative, that is actually a step backwards, at least psychologically.

As you've observed, Tony, photos aren't a talisman against time, death, or age. Everyone in photos will die and be forgotten eventually - just look at your average Hollywood film from 75-100 years ago - most of the people on-screen are long forgotten, and those are the ones that even got to be in a movie at all!

But pre-photograph... we had, to preserve the memory of people, paintings, and statues. That don't age - that aren't starkly, deathly black-&-white - age cannot wither them, nor custom stale their infinite variety. When people of times past saw images of their forefathers, they saw bold paintings in full color, full of life - the past was ever just a step away, not ages gone; there was more of the sense of time being movement, rather than distance.

Marcus Aurelius lamented the utterly forgotten figures of Rome's even recent past - and we've long since forgotten utterly HIS period - but he was also a melancholic, probably a clinical depressive. Everyone has a basket of photos at their homes, or albums; they rarely look at them. Less so, slides, old films, god-forbid video-tapes of say old weddings or birthday parties! Can you imagine someone saying they're going to spend the weekend or time during this quarantine looking at old video tapes of past family parties and gatherings? How horrible! And yet we were sold on how GREAT it was to preserve our memories like this! Lies. We only needed them to get great outtakes for "America's Funniest Home Videos." Just like we only need the internet, really, to share funny cat memes.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.154.254.251
Posted on Monday, March 30, 2020 - 04:11 pm:   

I very rarely take photos of my family unless my wife asks me to. I have long hated photos of people, unless they are strangers or people I admire. People I love, it's like memento mori, and really brings me down. I do love photos of places and things, though. You're right.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.154.254.251
Posted on Monday, March 30, 2020 - 04:16 pm:   

I've been listening to a musicals radio station and they are playing Old Man River a lot. So many perfect, shattering lines. "He must know sumpin, but don't say nothing.". "He don't plant taters, he don't plant cotton, but those that do are soon forgotten. " "I'm tired of Livin, but scared of dyin." Robeson sounds like Darth Vader, and somehow it's incredibly sad to picture that it is him singing it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Thursday, April 02, 2020 - 08:23 pm:   

Darth Vader should sing that song!

Pop/Rock songs that qualify as "eerie"....

"The Ballad of Billy Joe," Bobbie Gentry
"Wooden Ships," CSN
"Triad," Jefferson Airplane
"Four Sticks," Led Zeppelin
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.77.16
Posted on Saturday, April 04, 2020 - 11:57 pm:   

"What's he building in there?" by Tom Waits.

Maybe...
"Into the Night" by Julee Cruise (on the Twin Peaks soundtrack).

I can't remember if we talked about this, but what did you folks thing of Twin Peaks: The Return?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.155.7.97
Posted on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 10:14 am:   

I kept meaning to come back to this because I like eerie songs, but couldn't think of many. Billie Joe was always one, but so was I'm Mandy, Fly Me by 10cc.
I think I watched one episode of the new Twin Peaks but found it impossible to feel engaged. To wide, no characters to connect with.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.74.100
Posted on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 01:44 pm:   

It's quite wide, yeah. I think the character to connect with might be David Lynch, his mind.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.quarantino.org%2F2020%2F04% 2F05%2Fstay-sane-with-david-lynch-sticker%2F&psig=AOvVaw00y7GIyeHnPweW0c75bsUO&u st=1586518994536000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA4QjhxqFwoTCOjPxPuh2-gCFQAAAAAdAA AAABAD
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.155.7.97
Posted on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 01:47 pm:   

I also found an early scene too horrific, the horrible deaths of two people. I've come to realise I am not great with screen violence anymore.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.74.100
Posted on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 11:08 pm:   

I found it more okay when I thought of it, and the whole thing, as a metaphor. This chap explains it. For four and a half hours. It's an incredible video, this. http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AYnF5hOhuM&t=4495s
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.151.241.209
Posted on Sunday, April 12, 2020 - 06:01 pm:   

I'm not sure I can ever watch anything so long ever again. :-(
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Sunday, April 26, 2020 - 05:36 pm:   

Sadly, I can relate, I don't know if I have the patience for anymore long involving series again. I had my satiation with "Breaking Bad," in real time (as it ran) - can anything ever compete? I think about "Game of Thrones," and how long it would take me to travel through it... it fills me with dread; but then, if I thought of a great big book, or series of books - it's not dread, but longing (I do neither, but one fills me with dread so I don't do it; the other, I don't do it because it's intimidating). I'm just a born book-worm, is all.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.158
Posted on Saturday, June 06, 2020 - 10:22 am:   

Went for a walk the other day, about 20 miles or so, largely through a wood. We found a very overgrown graveyard in there, but no church. I don't know why, but that spooks me. Anyway, further in the wood is a huge deep and totally dried up river bed surrounded by cliffs and rocky walls. The river must have been deep and wild, but now it's gone. I decide we should walk down it so we do, and spend ages avoiding fallen logs, ledges where waterfalls used to be. Our dog vanishes for half an hour and we get frightened. Anyway, we start seeing signs of life, beer bottles perched on rocks, the circled remains of a fire. It sounds like I'm leading up to something, but I'm not, all I'm trying to say is it occured to me that camping in this deep wood would not be a good idea. I brought it up with my son and he said "No way.". Why? We have no animals that could kill you. I don't know what it was, it just didn't feel hospitable.
And yet, part of me WOULD like to camp there, see what it was like. Anyone done anything like that?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.158
Posted on Saturday, June 06, 2020 - 10:24 am:   

\image
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.158
Posted on Saturday, June 06, 2020 - 10:26 am:   

\image
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.77.76
Posted on Saturday, June 06, 2020 - 12:22 pm:   

Try again with the photos. Perhaps your instincts are telling you something about the place or the spoor of the people who were there before you (or, without your conscious knowledge, at the same time?).

Or perhaps we're more scared of people than wild animals these days?

Last year the leader of the Green Party here floated the idea of introducing wolves into the wild. Practicalities aside, I can't tell you how much I love the idea of that.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.77.76
Posted on Saturday, June 06, 2020 - 12:23 pm:   

I should say re-introducing wolves into the wild. They went extinct in the 18th century, 300 years after they were wiped out in England.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.158
Posted on Saturday, June 06, 2020 - 12:33 pm:   

Hmm...trying to share photos from my phone but can't seem to. It would be nice to see photos of our lives and experiences on here. My riverbed pics are good.
They just found a piece of chewing gum spat out by a prehistoric girl in a riverbed. An eagle eyed archaeologist spotted it among some flotsam. They manage to get her age and height. Imagine, snatched from oblivion by spat out gum.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.158
Posted on Saturday, June 06, 2020 - 12:34 pm:   

I feel quite drawn to riverbeds lately.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.79.142
Posted on Sunday, June 07, 2020 - 01:27 am:   

isn't it /image, not \image?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.79.142
Posted on Sunday, June 07, 2020 - 01:28 am:   

That's amazing about the gum! Time, eh?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.158
Posted on Sunday, June 07, 2020 - 02:32 am:   

/image{}
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.79.142
Posted on Sunday, June 07, 2020 - 07:43 pm:   

/image{}
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.79.142
Posted on Sunday, June 07, 2020 - 07:43 pm:   

Hmm, maybe it's not working?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.158
Posted on Sunday, June 07, 2020 - 11:34 pm:   

Are you doing this from a pc? I'm just using my phone and think it might be that.
Imagine if this place just stopped.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Monday, June 08, 2020 - 07:41 am:   

Fascinating, Tony! Question about one point - you mention finding a graveyard "but no church. I don't know why, but that spooks me." Do you mean a graveyard with no church attached? It's strange, because out here in SoCal, that's pretty much all you have! I can't think of a single cemetery with a church as part of it - some have faux or devoted little chapels on them (devoted to funeral services only), but they don't count. Here, we keep our dead and their religions strictly segregated. Not really, our cemeteries are designated Catholic or Jewish, etc.; but there are just no churches on them, or vice-versa.

Deep woods, which I haven't been in in quite some time (sigh... sadly... or not?..), I find deeply terrifying, if you let the terror enter you. For all their idyllic beauty, woods seem to vibrate: no humans welcome. Or maybe they just don't like me.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.65.102
Posted on Monday, June 08, 2020 - 10:32 am:   

Actually, you're right, the graves being away from the church IS quite common here, it's just I couldn't see a church anywhere, and only a few houses. Stones lay flat, many were peeking barely up above bushes and weeds, whole massive trees had pushed some aside. Maybe it was that sense of the death of the dead that was what was eerie, and the fact it was so far from any beaten track. God, I wish I still wrote.
But yes, these woods and that river bed did get to me. Cliffs inland bother me, too. It should have been beautiful but it wasn't. It made me realise the importance of paths, not venturing far from them. It's made me realise what the whole of supernatural literature is about; straying from that path.
I'm itching to camp there, but scared, too. I feel I need to conquer something irrational.

Did I mention my son's possible fairy sighting? Or the cliffs not far from here where wolf headed people have been seen and ufos? I happened to find that sudden changes in terrain seem to generate strange stuff, and it made me wonder that the cliffs, something about them, acted like some kind of generator. The area did buzz with atmosphere.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.65.102
Posted on Tuesday, June 09, 2020 - 02:16 pm:   

A post from Facebook;
Up until my sighting, if anyone had asked if I believed in the existence of anything other than the physical world I would have been non committal, I certainly didn't not believe, just a healthy respect for something I knew nothing about, but to be honest I'd never given it a great deal of thought. Up until July 2013 that is.
For my 50th birthday I went on holiday to the ardnamurchan peninsula, probably the most remote part of mainland UK where I stayed in a log cabin which again was isolated from the very small village of Kilchoan.
On this particular night I was walking home from the pub which is why I really don't speak about this as people ridicule you saying you were drunk, I wasn't, I drink very little so am fully aware of what happened.
As I walked back to my accommodation along a very remote track I saw something (I hate using this word to describe what I saw) run from my right side across the track and off across the countryside. What I saw was human shaped, small, possibly up to my elbow at most, very white skin and I vividly recall very long gangly limbs. As this person ran I clearly saw it looking over its right shoulder at me before it disappeared from sight. I was startled by my experience, not scared as there was no menace or aggression, just a little shocked as I genuinely didnt know what I had seen. As an avid wildlife watcher Im confident that it was not any type of animal as I would certainly recognise any kind of animal that could have be wandering around that place.
But there's a bit more. The cabin I stayed at was old and there was a visitors book which had been there many years so one day I flicked through it and found one old entry which read "there's a yeti here. I know you won't believe us because we are children and you will think we are making it up but I saw it on the lawn"."
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2020 - 04:39 pm:   

THIS IS A HORROR STORY I'M READING!!!

I don't mean that in the my reaction to what you wrote - but I mean this is the beginning to a great horror story you should write - or fantasy, depending on how you want it to work out.

I believe you, Tony... we don't know the world around us... so much still unexplored... and that little island known as Britain, how many mysteries yet to be uncovered after thousands of years!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.231
Posted on Thursday, June 11, 2020 - 12:16 pm:   

I should have been clearer, the last was not my story. But I have spoken with the man and believe him wholeheartedly.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.26.249
Posted on Wednesday, January 13, 2021 - 01:06 pm:   

https://www.google.com/amp/s/hauntedspotslibrary.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/weekly -haunted-spot-6-ghost-car-accident-leads-to-real-body-surrey-england/amp/
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.26.249
Posted on Wednesday, January 13, 2021 - 01:07 pm:   

http://www.thedefectivespodcast.uk/blog/january-30th-2018

Add Your Message Here
Post:
Bold text Italics Underline Create a hyperlink Insert a clipart image

Username: Posting Information:
This is a private posting area. Only registered users and moderators may post messages here.
Password:
Options: Enable HTML code in message
Automatically activate URLs in message
Action:

Topics | Last Day | Last Week | Tree View | Search | Help/Instructions | Program Credits Administration