School Pictures

Close encounters with violence, abnormal psychology and a lot of blood. It's just a normal day at school.

Studies in spatter which we get to create ourselves. Weapon of choice? We are given an option of baseball bat, hammer and crow bar. Let the blood fly.

Spatter and tire tread pattern analysis.

Crime scene lab. True crime scenes are often recreated. Most people got tripped up determining the murder weapon, which can be seen in this photo. It was originally left behind a door. Poor girl.

These models are especially helpful when discerning what a possible passerby/witness may have seen. We can look right through from "outside" to get their perspectives. Very helpful in cases like Lizzie Borden's. I did an earlier post on the "inventor" of this aspect of forensic science and the fantastic documentary Of Dolls And Murder.

Imprinting my Docs for an exercise in evidence retrieval.

Miscellaneous.

Diet Coke is on the Most Wanted list.

Galvanic Reanimation - It's Alive!

Currently, I am obsessed with the history of galvanization experiments and research - which means you'll be reading about it here sooner or...sooner. For now, I'll let the following pictures speak their dark, macabre words...

The last two images come from the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University.

Apocalypse Cakes: Recipes for The End

...because The End should be delicious.

"Inexplicable" Blackbird Pie.

Raining Blood Red Velvet - perfect for your American Horror Story party.

The simple, yet elegant Fallen Angel Angel Food Cake.


The website - http://apocalypsecakes.wordpress.com/about/

The book - http://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Cakes-Recipes-Shannon-OMalley/dp/0762441062/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1284838276&sr=1-1

First State Asylum For The Insane

Opened in 1900, just outside of Minneapolis, MN. This facility was the first in the state created exclusively for the "care" and housing of "the insane."

Architect, Warren B. Dunnell, designed the gothic, brick "cottages" in light of the fires which claimed 18 lives at nearby St. Peter State Hospital. A vast system of underground tunnels connect the many cottages, used by the staff to conduct the day to day workings of the asylum. There are many stories of patients who tried to escape via the tunnel system. Finding themselves lost, confused and scared they would often commit suicide by hanging themselves from the pipes overhead.

It is no wonder that reports of unexplained noises, whispers and laughter have been reported in the tunnels. Footsteps are heard when there is no one there and cold spots are often felt.

The asylum is still in use today, although much of it is abandoned. A lush and idyllic spot with woods surrounding one area and a river running along the rear of the facility, the property also has it's own cemetery, to bury it's unclaimed and unwanted, which Mr. Blackwood and I searched in vain for. We did venture around the rear of a cottage near the outskirts of the facility and ran into a number of inmates sitting outside in a fully enclosed, cage-like patio. We rapidly turned back, unnoticed.

Stories like this one about a Lady In Red also pop up often from both ex-inmates and workers there: "I use to work at the state hospital, and let me tell you, the mystery of the women in red in the tunnels is so true. We use to walk pt's. thru the tunnels to get to the other buildings when the weather was bad, and lights would flicker and yes you could hear moaning at times, and in your peripheral vision, you would see some woman running and could only catch a glimpse of her. Ask anyone who ever worked there years ago..."

Pictured above is one of the many entrances to the underground tunnels.

Spotted on the 3rd floor of a cottage - not what you'd want to see in a patient's room.

The Haunted Portrait

Midsummer of this year I received an email from a dear friend of mine who explained that a possibly haunted portrait had come into her possession and did I want it? Um...yes.

She explains; "A client brought it to me thinking I could exorcise it and keep it for my office as decor. She had said that it "gave her the creeps" and that she and other people had felt a spirit connected to the portrait. At first I was inwardly skeptical, but I set the portrait down against the wall about 2 feet away from me at foot to knee level and began talking about something else. I began feeling what I can only describe as electrical emanations coming from the picture - it was like being near a tesla coil and your hair standing up - warm and electrical. I knew it was coming from the portrait and it was only hitting me from my feet to knees - at the exact level of the portrait. So, although I have worked with friendly spirits in the past, I don't want to mess with this one, not that it feels "bad" or scary necessarily, but I just have a feeling of being a little out of my league."


She left it outside her office door for me to pick up as she didn't want it inside. A couple weeks passed and Mr. Blackwood, who knew none of this and was simply asked to retrieve it on his way home from work, which he did. However, he had a very strange story for me when he arrived home with it. When he picked it up, at the moment of contact he said he felt an immediate electrical charge in his hand which continued up his arm. A kind of tingling sensation, akin to when a limb "falls asleep."

A couple days later we attended a paranormal conference where we had a booth and brought the portrait along. We hadn't told anyone about it yet but asked a psychic/medium friend of ours, Kathryn Wilson, if she would take a look at it. After contemplating it for a while she said she felt that it had quite a lot of energy attached to it belonging not to the little boy pictured, but to his mother. She was quite a stubborn lady and this being her prized possession, she didn't want to let go of it. Kathryn also stated that the thought the boy's name was Charles and that his mother didn't understand that her child had grown up and had passed on. When Kathryn tried communicating this to her, the mother was as tenacious as ever.

Hours later, another friend of ours was visiting with us at the booth and I pulled the portrait out and said, "Hey, take a look at this." Nothing more, nothing less. He had no prior knowledge of us having the portrait nor of Kathryn's comments. He immediately exclaimed that the object was giving off "tons of energy," and that a female, the mother of the child was very strongly attached to it. He also stated that the child's name was...Charlie.

Charlie currently occupies a place in my house in the living room, above the fireplace. In the next couple weeks or so, I plan on taking the portrait out of the frame in hopes something - the child's name? A date? Will be written on the back. I also am looking for a local expert in Victorian era portraiture to date it and tell me more.

I also plan on speaking to her via ITC and EVP work...hopefully, someone will respond.


Kathryn Wilson: http://web.me.com/ufojoe/psychickathryn/Kathryn_Wilson.html

The Midnight Archive

I am smitten, twitterpated even with a new webseries, The Midnight Archive , from filmmaker and writer Ronni Thomas. Thomas sets out "To document the exotic, the strange, the eccentric and the truly unique. Often dark and always on the fringe..." Inspired by the fascinating array of people that pass through the Brooklyn Observatory both to teach/lecture and to learn, The Midnight Archives' first three installments feature pet mummification, Mitch Horowitz's Occult New York tour and anthropomorphic taxidermy.



I have often said I would love to move to New York for a year simply to partake of the classes and lectures offered at the Observatory. This sates me...for now. Perhaps I should just start an LA Observatory?

The Midnight Archive: http://www.themidnightarchive.com/

The Observatory: http://observatoryroom.org/

Mitch Horowitz: http://www.mitchhorowitz.com/

Countdown To Halloween - Greetings and Salutations

Greetings, Gentle Readers. Welcome to Blackwood. Since this is likely to be our first meeting, an introduction is certainly in order...

We used to live in a duplex when I was little. My mother's parents lived on one side of the structure and my father on the other side. My bedroom was in the middle of the two houses. While my father was out at work, which was every weekday twelve to eighteen hours a day, my grandparents were my primary caretakers. So, at bedtime if my father was still at work, I would be put to bed at the proper time by my grandmother.

On this particular night I had been put to bed and my father, just arriving home from work, came in to see me and tell me goodnight. I remember his silhouette moving across the room in the dark, around the bed and kissing me whilst reaching over to turn on the light.

Turning on the light was a mistake.

As the light from my little lamp flooded the room and my eyes adjusted, I saw my father standing over me, covered, from head to foot, in blood.

I was told I screamed and cried. I don't remember that, (I was slightly more than a toddler and my family is amazed I can remember anything at all), but I do remember the feeling of fear. It took him a few moments to understand my reaction as he had forgotten all about his appearance.

My father had just come home from filming the famous pig blood scene in the movie Carrie.

As a child, and even now as an adult I have grown up among the most amusing images. Some tangible, some pictorial. There is a series of photographs, (my father has a couple of them and I know some of the others appeared in magazines), of my father and Sissy Spacek, covered in blood, arms around one another, big smiles, looking as though they are posing for their prom picture.

I am told that the following day, I begged to be taken to the set. So began the macabre fancies of a little girl, now grown, living in LA. Today, I hunt down evidence of things paranormal, take classes in forensic science at the Hertzbeg-Davis Forensic Science Center and have just been accepted into the Parapsychology program at the Rhine Research Center. Mostly, I long for a place where its always Halloween.

Feel free to roam about as you like or you can select something from the list to your right, The Best Of Blackwood. You'll find stories from paranormal investigations I have done, macabre historical pieces, strange stories of "old" Hollywood and LA, plenty of ghost stories, creepy music for your playlist, and various oddities.

- Merricat

Original artwork by Steve Troop