I post a lot of stuff on my Tumblr, share a lot of pictures on my Instagram, put videos on my YouTube channel, and do dumb things every day with Twitter. I’m also starting a regular thing on my Twitch channel (more on that later), so I can honestly say that I produce a lot of content or at least share a lot of content online. But it feels like my blog, which is where the whole thing started, is largely neglected, because I feel like I can only post bigger things or deeper things or heavier things here.
So I’m giving myself permission to post whatever the hell I want, so I can just get past the internal gatekeeper slash critic who prevents me from using the one space on the Internet that is entirely mine.
Therefore: I hereby challenge myself to post one thing a day during the month of December, no matter what it is. It can be a picture, a few lines from a work in progress, a video, a collection of links to things, or even just one link to one thing.
So. It is December first, and I am beginning with something dumb that is still interesting to me.
Even though I am writing a short, supernatural story right now, I do not believe in the paranormal. At all. Still, I freaking love it. It isn’t real, even a little bit, but it’s fun to pretend that it is. I love the idea that aliens are real, that ghosts haunt our world, that people make dark pacts with demons, and that Cryptozoological beasts are all real, just incredibly hard to find and photograph. I love the idea of the Denver Airport being some crazy Illuminati thing and the aliens use it as a landing facility. The Face On Mars is horseshit, but it’s fun to pretend that it isn’t. All of this stuff is delightful fan fiction that is set in our own world, and we’re all characters in it, whether we know it or not.
So I’m starting The Daily December with something from a paranormal blog I love.
The Tallmann House
In the case of the haunted Tallmann House, residents of an ordinary home in Horicon, Wisconsin found themselves the victims of a very strange thing indeed: a haunted bunk bed. According to Cult of Weird, in 1988, this family suffered through nine months of intense paranormal activity after purchasing a used bunk bed, including spectral apparitions. They ultimately fled their home, but not before rumors of even stranger things – including bleeding walls – spread throughout their neighborhood.
I mean, you’re not going to do much better than “Haunted Bunk Bed Terrifies Family”, right?
I’m from Madison, WI, and I was in 3rd grade when this happened. I remember being captivated by the story, which was in the news at the time. It is a very funny headline to read now, but as a 3rd grader who took the Ghostbusters very seriously I thought it was terrifying!
That sounds like a fun way to blog through December! Have you seen the Advent Calendar of Kindness? I’m trying that for my December challenge!
Haunted bunk bed? Should have left that for the end of the month cause I think you just peaked!!!
I’m interested in your Pi-experiences. I made several Pi media servers last year, and used the excellent http://www.melgrubb.com tutorials to get things working. Looking for a new project for a Pi-3 that I want to buy. (Although there are tons of Pi-projects, haven’t found one that totally interests me yet.)
But a Pi-post would be interesting to this geek.
I remember seeing this story on a episode of “Unsolved Mysteries”. Fast forward 28 years and its one of two segments I remember from that show.
I applaud this new goal of yours, Wil. You are very good at setting goals and achieving them! I look forward to daily missives from your blog.
Month of Wil.
Okay, I can support this.
“I mean, you’re not going to do much better than “Haunted Bunk Bed Terrifies Family”, right?”
Just a bit better: “…a ghost-powered snowblower that cleaned the driveway on its own.” This must be the most Wisconsin of all hauntings!
Reminds me of Patton Oswalt’s joke about Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Bed:_The_Bed_That_Eats)
I’m so glad you’re doing this. I check your blog daily. I follow you on Twitter, but forget to check Twitter and the rest are ???? You’re so creative and have been so disciplined that I’m glad you’re going to be a little silly and frivolous with your blog. Happy December to you and to us, who started here.
I love grand conspiracies. I’d recommend the Illuminatus Trilogy but that thing, while having some moments, is generally just a doorstop. There are some books based on an RPG called Dark Matter that are good, but unfortunately the overarching story arc never was completed.
I have tried to read that book so many times, and I always end up giving up. I just can’t follow it.
one does have to be either pathologically stubborn or drunk to read it. But heck, I read the bible so why not one more peculiar book 🙂
I am a firm believer in the power of goofy. We all need to enjoy a little goofy. I don’t believe in ghosts, UFOs, giant strange critters that no one ever gets a good picture of. I am looking forward to you daily post and hope for the occasional goofy.
Hooray for December! Presents every day for Crimbo celebrations in the game Kingdom of Loathing, and Hanukkah, and Christmas, and now all the Wil posts to read…this is going to be a lovely month!!
It’ll be a great month, Wil.
Have a terrific weekend !
Well… I’ve actually BEEN to that house… and I’m not sure that there is anything that has happened there for a LONG time!
But I can tell you this… as someone that has actually Dabbled in the “Para-Normal/Ghost Hunting” thing when I was in my early 20’s I have Seen and Experienced ALOT of Strange and Scary Shit! And THAT HOUSE to ME Still has a very Strong Vib that I would Care NOT to Get Involved with!
Even now in my Early 50’s I try NOT to “Go There” again because I DID have some Very Terrifying Experiences… Some that Followed me for some time!
The Para-Normal / Super Natural world is Something we no so very Little about… and a person can easily become damaged or even scared from those experiences!
P.S…. My Grand Kids and I LOVE Watching you on “Table Top” and I JUST took my Oldest Grand Son to his Very FIRST Fandom Convention earlier this past November.
We Went to “Windy Con 43” In Chicago and We had a Blast! It’s been some years since I went to a Con and I’d almost Forgotten How Fun they were!
Keep Up the Great Episodes of Table Top! 😀
Well quite a few astrophysicist do think aliens are likely out there. They just uncertain of the form they would take. If you mean aliens in the form that most conspiracy theorist think well that’s another story.
On a side note. Just watched the first couple of episodes of season 4 of tabletop and they really brightened my day! Thanks for the great fun sir.
Have you read House of Leaves? It does some interesting stuff both with editorial notes and footnotes taking on voices of their own, and kind of gets lost in itself, but the actual story part of the story alone is just excellent. It dos a great job of presenting the quiet horror of a family encountering the paranormal in their home. I really need to read it again myself, actually.
I’m just waiting for the fun to begin when the Chinese discover that ‘OOPS’, there is indeed a UFO base on the back side of the moon!
http://m.xkcd.com/1767/ you because a state
Wil – So you might say this story is pure bunk?
“Nelson wrote in a February 19th, 1988 article for the Sentinel that the family had buried it in a private landfill in the Horicon area where they felt no one was likely to build a house”.
Really?! Something as destructible as a bunk bed haunts your family and drives you all to the brink of madness and you bury it instead of burn it! Why?…
So the story can live on, of course! 🙂
Thanks for sharing Wil.
I’m always surprised when intelligent people don’t believe in aliens. I mean, in this vast universe, it not only seems likely to me, but even probable, that we are not even close to being the most technologically advanced life forms in existence. Seriously. Not even close. In fact, I think there could very well be several – maybe even many – planets far more advanced than ours.
And, following this thought to its logical conclusion, why wouldn’t they be trying to explore other planets in the universe just as we are trying to reach the little bit we can get to in our solar system? Certainly, we will keep trying to explore further and further out, once we have the technology…which we don’t, and won’t for a good long while. But it seems a bit arrogant to assume that just because we can barely get out of our own backyard that other, far more advanced civilizations in places we don’t have a clue about haven’t achieved much, much more.
I would be more surprised to learn that we aren’t being observed and studied from afar, and have been for quite some time, than to learn that we haven’t been. After all, isn’t that what we plan to do, once we have the capability?
Personally, I consider our current level of technology to still be in a pretty crude stage. And though I’ve never been an optimist by nature, I don’t see how the humanity on this planet could possibly be the most developed in the universe.
In general, I think this world and the people in it are just one big hot mess, though day to day living for some of us is not at all bad and there is certainly good/beauty if you look for it. But the best? The smartest? In the whole entire fucking universe? I just don’t see how that could be possible.
Oh, to be clear: I absolutely believe that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. It’s the ridiculous conspiracy theories about abductions and all that stuff that I don’t believe for a second.
Well, you know, I agree with that about 99.9%. Because there’s no question that people are fucking nuts. However…whenever I dwell on the idea for too long, I get an uncomfortable little niggling feeling. And it comes from the fact that I’m pretty sure, if our government was capable of landing on another planet, abducting samples of the species to study is exactly the kind of thing they’d do.
And I promise you, I have zero paranoia tendencies. I don’t think there are any kind of wide spread conspiracies about landing on the moon or anything else. Nor do I believe that there are actually alien samples in Area 51. I do believe our gov’t would grab an alien life form first chance they got, but they’d never be able to keep it secret for very long. Although, I have to admit that, as I wrote that, I started getting flashbacks from Men in Black. Anyway, my point is, if I can see us doing something like that, then why wouldn’t someone else do the same thing?
It’s not a firm belief…just a tiny, uncomfortable feeling. It could be the premise for so many science fiction stories. If an advanced species had been studying us for years, maybe centuries, what would be their next step once they finally were capable of coming here? And how can we be sure that it hasn’t already happened?
It’s not something I think about often. God knows I’ve got too much actual shit in my life to think about. But though that is not the kind of thing it ever occurred to write about, I’m starting to think that the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach when I do think about it might be reason enough to give it a shot.
Well… As Wil as the character “Wesley Crusher” knows… “FIRST CONTACT” and “NEW SPECIES OBSERVATIONS” Are a Main Theme and Focus in Star Trek Because as it was once said… “Earlier Contact with the Klingons was Disastrous!”
And I DO think that if Aliens HAVE come here or ARE here…. SEEING How VISIOUS and AGGRESIVE and VIOLENT Our Human Species IS…
WE are Dangerous… and SHOULD be treated with Sever Cautions!!!
So I Would THINK that they would try to stay as “Incognito” as Possible!
Yes, but what about the moon being made of cheese? That one has to be true, right?
I’m in. On the challenge to post daily, that is. Several times (three, I think) in the past decade or so, I’ve done an Advent challenge to write a short fan fiction daily for twenty-four days. The first one was done based on an Advent calendar a friend opened daily. She told a writing group I was in the object behind the door, and we wrote a story based on that object. Led to one of my all-time favorite stories. I’d decided a few days ago to do this again this year, but then it was December and I forgot. But I’m only a day late, right? Onward! Thanks for reminding me to play with creativity, Wil, and I look forward to your posts, too.
This sounds awesome. I like twitter and instagram and tumblr and facebook, but comments on twitter feel lost in a sea of trolls. Instagram is fun, I feel like I’m doing everything wrong on tumblr and facebook is a mess.
So. I will comment with something fun, nice, or random every day, as a thank you for putting stuff here. December 3 is a new start of a personal thing for me, so this will be good. I hope.
Oh, and the haunted bed story was great.
I think the thing about being a realist (and cynic) is that it is so tiring to get through the day that our brains need relief and that comes with themes that are out of this world, or at least removed from reality. I love horror, especially supernatural horror, (urban) fantasy and Sci Fi and while they can be cruel and nasty, they provide an escape from a reality that is even worse and there to see on our TV news every single day.