Recently all of us at the office put together a big, combined order from Amazon. Included in mine was some Warren Ellis, some Warhammer novels and a few bits and pieces including a book about weird things in American history by one Robert Damon Schneck named The President’s Vampire.
This proved to be a damn good read. I was familiar with several cases he covered (I mean who hasn’t heard about the phantom attackers of colonial Gloucester?) but there were several new to me. And the final case covered, well.
As the start of the last chapter says, people of a nervous disposition or those prone to obsessive thoughts would probably be better off not knowing about the case. So if you’re one of those, tune out here…
Still here? Good.
OK, the last chapter covers a very strange and downright creepy series of events encountered by a friend of the author who started playing around with a ouija board. Over the period of several months he and his friends made contact with some “entities” (a catch all term for whatever it is you contact via a ouija board, be they ghosts, demons, elementals, aliens, dolphins, the NSA or fragmented sections of the sitters’ subconciousnii) who eventually (quite reluctantly) supplied them with information about a malevolant being whose name I shall not repeat here, because (so the entities claimed) if you know his name he’ll come and hunt you down.
A series of very weird and eerie events followed, including one of the group having an inexplicable late night encounter with something that may or may not have been the creature in question.
After relating the events Schneck goes on to present a very well thought out (although – as in the best stories of this kind – ultimately inconclusive) analysis of the case. You can (and he does) come up with a perfectly rational explanation for it all, as long as you’re willing to accept the subconcious-action theory of the ouija board, but it’s still downright weird – and I speak as someone so well versed in the paranormal that I don’t count things as weird until crop circles start appearing in solid concrete.
Now, just out of idle curiosity I googled the name of the murderous being spoken about via the board. And to my surprise I discovered a simplified account of the case being circulated around the net as creepypasta!
(What’s creepypasta? Get with the program man! It’s the 2010’s for crying out loud! :))
This is strangely cool. Creepypasta is generally assumed to be complete grabage but here we have a case where it’s based in truth. I don’t know if Mr Schneck is aware of this, but I may drop him a line and tell him.
For the brave of heart, creepypasta accounts of the case may be found here and here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
