Month: September 2018

Technically it isn’t the museum–Wolf’s Museum of Mystery, that is–that is in need of saving. Hopefully the Museum will weather this and continue on. Rather it is the current location of the Museum that needs saving. Saving from “modernization.” Saving from “renovation.” The Victorian-era house where Wolf’s is located, and has been for the past…

It is probably the most famous, or infamous, of all the accounts of REAL werewolves, that of Stumpf Peter, aka Peter Stump, aka Peter Stumpp, aka Stubbe Peter. The problem is, the case occurred back before there was anything resembling uniformity of spelling. The OTHER problem is, neither “Stubbe” nor “Stump” nor “Stumpf” is a…

The clank of steel against steel, the sound of the cell door sliding closed, woke Lucas Vale from his stupor. He stood for an instant, disoriented, his eyes taking in the confines of the tiny cell: drab gray walls of painted over cinderblock, interlocking bars of ugly blue metal, a narrow bunk bolted to the…

The Ironwood City Jail had been erected adjacent to the town library, with very little visible difference between the two, constructed as they were at the same time and by the same architect, the same builders. Both structures now occupied the short list of Ironwood’s historic sites, though both had been renovated more than once.…

A couple of true stories, actually, with a little creative license thrown in. “Cletus Cobb, Jr. versus the Alabama Booger”, a short audio drama written by yours truly, was featured recently in the podcast Rocket City Radio Hour by Theater Huntsville, hosted by playwright Benjamin Shapiro. (No relation to the conservative windbag of the same…

Listen to the voice of experience, here. Twenty years ago, when I was still a wet-behind-the-ears, longhaired weirdo (as opposed to the dry-behind-the-ears, bald weirdo I am now), I had a “pet” wolf. A “hybrid,” actually, 7/8s wolf and 1/8 Siberian Husky. I lived alone, had no children or other pets, and did not interact…

Our story, our collective story as human beings, is so impossibly old that our minds can’t comprehend it, and that timeline keeps getting pushed further and further back into the dim past. Recent evidence proves people were in the Americas—in Texas, to be more specific— and fashioning stone tools over 20,000 years ago—which is double…

The Satanic Temple out of Salem, Massachusetts, is doing some good work these days. They’re taking a stand for separation of Church and State and defending individual liberties. But they are an organization made up of human beings and, as one of their tenets reminds us, human beings are fallible creatures. We shouldn’t expect them…

Scientists are human, too, susceptible to all the same foibles and character weaknesses as any other person. There is a tendency among scientists, who ought to be the most open-minded of individuals, to dismiss out of hand anything that does not conform to their established belief systems, sans investigation or even a second thought. Does…