Countdown to Hallowe'en 2017: Thy Love to Me was Wonderful

Image Source: Alvin Lee Tribute Website.

In February of this year, it emerged in the UK press that the guitarist of Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, owned Hook End Manor in Oxfordshire, UK. Now abandoned, the reports were an invitation to UK urban explorers to go have a look. Youtube now boasts a number of urbex videos giving us a peek into a rock star's life from thirty years ago. The description for the video below was adapted a report from The Daily Mail:

"David Gilmour bought the manor in 1980 from Alvin Lee of the blues band Ten Years After. He recorded some of Pink Floyd’s 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason in a studio at the house. Horn recorded the hit single Video Killed The Radio Star and masterminded the success of the 1980s group Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

He bought Hook End Manor in the 1990s before placing it on the market for £10 million in 2007.

The house - thought to have been built for the Bishop of Reading around 1580 - boasted a gym, heated swimming pool, croquet lawn and tennis court, pergola and terracing.

The 11-bedroom Elizabethan manor house, set in 25 acres, boasted a state-of-the-art recording studio where Spandau Ballet and Jamiroquai also recorded hit tracks.

The home - worth around £12million - was sold by record producer Trevor Horn in 2007 after his wife Jill Sinclair, 55, was struck by a stray pellet fired from her son Aaron’s air rifle in the garden of the mansion.

The pellet lodged in Jill's neck, piercing an artery and she was rushed to hospital, but despite prompt medical attention she had to be put into a drug-induced coma. She died in 2014."

The house is currently on the site of RPA Architects as a slated refurbishment project.

Images Source: Daily Mail.

In the video below, see urban explorers go though the abandoned mansion. In the basement, they found a morbid memento, the tombstone of a small boy: LITTLE JACK. April 17th 1909. THY LOVE TO ME WAS WONDERFUL. Morrissey, lead singer of The Smiths, stayed in the house and reported that he (and other visitors) felt a ghostly hand on their chests, waking them each day at 4:10 in the morning.

PINK FLOYDS ABANDONED MILLIONAIRE 1580s MANSION (EVERYTHING LEFT BEHIND) DAVID GILMOUR LIVED HERE! (30 September 2017). At 10:48 (here) in the video, the urban explorers find a tombstone in the basement. Video Source: Youtube.

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Check out other blogs observing the Countdown to Hallowe'en!
Image Source: 4Chan.

Countdown to Hallowe'en 2017: The Highgate Vampire and the Hampstead Witch Hunt

These were the people in your neighbourhood: David Farrant's 1971 photograph of French occultist, Martine de Sacy, supposedly engaged in a Wiccan cleansing ritual performed at the scene of Necromantic rites in the Cory-Wright vault at Highgate Cemetery, UK. De Sacy's later comments on Farrant conflicted with Farrant's version of events. Image Source © David Farrant/Hampstead Christ Church.

One of the most disturbing political and social rumours to emerge in the past two years is the Pedogate story of worldwide child slavery, black magic, and ritual sacrifice. It was widely dismissed in the mainstream media as vicious disinformation, spread to bolster populism, nationalism, neo-fascism, and anti-Semitism. Indeed, it does revive the ugliest medieval anti-Semitic hoax, the blood ritual myth.

My interpretation does not consider Pedogate's counter-factual aspects to be true. That is, I do not believe in the anti-Semitic hoax. Rather, I consider more carefully how disinformation can be exploited and I have written here on the kernels of fact upon which the myths are based. I have argued that the Pedogate rumour has real underpinnings in the Internet's exacerbation of child porn and child sexual exploitation. And the rumour has had further practical applications in the new development of Internet politics. These stories are not without substance, as successive scandals demonstrate.

One aspect of this disinformation is a rage against, and dehumanization of, the upper tier of society in the post-2008 recession era. Today's example considers an incredibly damaging and frightening set of accusations leveled at the well-to-do inhabitants of Hampstead, London, from 2014 to 2017. The Hampstead case is part of the Pedogate moral panic, and concerns terrifying accounts of child abuse and Satanic practices. The locals in Hampstead have denied the whole story; all accusations remain unproven.

A Big Blog Thank You

S. Manon's photo of New York City's Central Park on a foggy fall night (2 October 2012). Image Source: Wiki.

This blog just passed 3 million hits! Thank you very much to everyone who has spent precious time here reading these posts. I am extremely grateful to all my readers. There will be a giveaway in November to thank readers who have helped the blog to pass this milestone.

Central Park on a foggy night. Image Source: Favim.

Countdown to Hallowe'en 2017: Psychic Vampires and Ambrosia's Blood Elixirs

Image Source: Etsy.

There is a disturbing subculture on social media which is devoted to teaching people how to siphon off the life force of others in order to gain power and control in society. Immersed in the dark occult, these self-proclaimed 'psychic feeders' and 'psychic vampires' like to go to public areas, workplaces, or social gatherings to drain the positive energy from young families, the negative energy from sick people, and everything in between. They use holiday periods such as Christmas to exploit the prana, 'chi' or 'qi' of others. They regard this ability as a honed skill. Even if you don't believe in any of this, there are people who do, and they are worth avoiding.

Image Source: Humans are Free.

You may not recognize them. Psychic vampires intentionally steal life energy from sexual interactions and will feign love or sympathy for people in order to partake of others' spiritual forces. They 'store' this energy inside themselves, or inside crystals and objects, so they may direct these forces later at other people. They are so malevolent that I will not embed their how-to videos, or link directly to their material, on this blog. However, you can see searches for their videos, with typical results, here and here.

Countdown to Hallowe'en 2017: Humanity's Tombstone

Image Source: Vigilant Citizen.

I try to address really strange conspiracy theories, which nonetheless have some larger importance, during the month of October. Special weirdness is reserved for a Stonehenge-like monument in Georgia, USA, which bears cryptic messages in English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian.

Brad Meltzer's Decoded: Apocalypse in Georgia Season 1, Episode 10 (3 February 2011) © History Channel. Video Source: Youtube.

The Georgia Guidestones outside Atlanta were erected in 1980 on the orders of man working under an assumed name, R. C. Christian. There are revelations of his secret identity here and here. The Guidestones have inspired fear and vandalism, because alongside their espousal of rationalism, they also declare that the earth's human population should be cut back to 500 million people.

Countdown to Hallowe'en 2017: The Famine of Memory

This is an early incarnation of the villain, Sauron, when he was known as Mairon. Image Source: The Land of Shadow.

One of the premises of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is that the characters live in a perilous time when real history has been lost. Thus, mortal danger arises not from the arch-villain, exactly, but from the abandoned vigilance of memory.

A later incarnation of Sauron, when he was known as Annatar. Image Source © Angel Falto/Tolkien Gateway.

Another conception of Annatar, who deceived the elves in the Second Age. Image Source © Alaïs/deviantART/Tolkien Gateway.

Countdown to Hallowe'en 2017: Dark Ambient and Dark Web Tales

Sure, you're goth, but are you dejectedly riding the subway with your raven goth? pic.twitter.com/KDboTBUI2O

— Max Sparber (@maxsparber) April 29, 2017

There are new horror genres appearing online, in which the fear factor depends on blurring the line between the virtual and real. It makes the raven girl on the subway, above, oddly reassuring: at least she is honest about how gothic things are these days.

Potion Shop Sounds | Apothecary Ambience | 45 Minutes (24 June 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

Over the past few years, ambient horror soundtracks have appeared on Youtube, which are unsettling because they add a cinematic video game quality to daily work at the desk. Some people listen to them to get to sleep, like the 6-hour Quiet Rusty Sewer Ambient Noise River.

Aaron Dykes at Truthstream Media explains the power of music - related to the frequency at which the eardrums vibrate - and particularly the discordant Locrian mode. From Bridget Mermikides: "From at least the early 18th century this tritone was described as Diabolus in Musica (the Devil in music)." The Secret Power Music Holds Over You (30 August 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

Locrian Mode example. Sample Source: Wiki.

Locrian Mode example: Björk's Army of Me (1995). Sample Source: Wiki.

The new horror music is non-music, made up of cinematic sound effects tracks. There is a spectrum of how scary these recordings are; they range (at the top) from vague background noise to (lower down) demonic atmospherics.

Haunted Halloween Mansion Fireplace with Thunder, Rain and Howling Wind (24 October 2016). Video Source: Youtube.

HAUNTED FOREST Scary Sounds of Ghosts in the Darkness 2 HOURS (12 March 2015). Video Source: Youtube.

Gathering Darkness - Scary Noises in a Haunted House - 2 Hours (2 May 2015). Video Source: Youtube.

Amazing SCARY 3D Holophonic Sound (21 August 2013). Video Source: Youtube.

Another example of horror found in the blurring between the virtual and the real is evident in a new genre of online horror story-telling, an offshoot of creepypastas, which explores the Dark Web. The Dark Web is reputed to be a place where anything goes, outside police jurisdictions, in a No Man's Land of international anonymity. Many Darknet communities are devoted to whistle-blowing, hacking, politics, drugs, crime, and hidden news.

By contrast, the Clearnet is the main, indexed Internet with which everyone is familiar. Clearnet lists of Dark Websites from 2015 to 2017 are here, here, here, here, and here - but don't click on links in those lists or surf further without a Tor browser and a VPN. A May 2017 Motherboard report gave a link to a list of every possible site on the Dark Web, that is, 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 sites, or just over one septillion Dark Websites beyond the reach of Google. That number directly contradicts Wired's 2015 estimate that there were over a billion sites on the Clear Web and 7,000 to 30,000 Dark Websites. You can see the total number of indexed Clear Websites counted in real time at Internet Live Stats.

Interactive livestream horror. Deep Web Horror Story - Why I Left The Deep Web by TASDiablo (21 May 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

Countdown to Hallowe'en 2017: Operation Wandering Soul

"Fair Use dissemination of documentary clip about 'Wandering Soul,' aka 'Ghost Tape Number 10' - an audio harassment theme recorded by the US Army Psychological Operations Battalion for loudspeaker broadcast during the Vietnam War. 'Wandering Soul' attempted to demoralise Vietcong opposition by engaging with traditional Vietnamese superstition and folk-lore." Video Source: Youtube.

During the Vietnam War, the Americans exploited a local Vietnamese superstition that a person must be buried in the soil of their homeland, or be doomed to wander through hell forever. The US Army developed a psyop called Operation Wandering Soul, in which they created funeral dirges and dead Vietnamese soldiers' lost souls, warning Viet Cong soldiers to retreat. They played this tape into the jungle at night. You can read more about Operation Wandering Soul, here and here.