I have no direct knowledge of this phenomena. I’ve never been to Troublesome Creek. (But, oh, how I adore that name.) I cannot find any public domain photographs of the condition. Still, I am fascinated.

While web wandering, I searched through dozens of sites to find the most reputable sources of information to share:

• http://abcnews.go.com/Health/blue-skinned-people-kentucky-reveal-todays-genetic-lesson/story?id=15759819#.T8BfBtV5F8E
• http://www.indiana.edu/~oso/lessons/Blues/TheBlues.htm
• http://www.archives.com/genealogy/family-heritage-blue-people.html

The ABC News website captions this image as a hand-colored black and white photo of Martin Fugate and his family. The source is shown as unknown.

In case you don’t have the time or inclination to read through those websites, allow me to relate the highlights.

It seems that Martin Fugate emigrated to Kentucky’s Troublesome Creek in approximately 1820. (From Virginia? France? Sources differ on this and other details.) Family lore says that his skin was blue, which seems to be confirmed by the above image, (but remember it is hand-tinted.) He married a local woman with fair skin, who nevertheless seems to have carried the same recessive trait he did. They had seven children, four of whom were born blue. These seven children married into the few local families in the area and founded a distinct bloodline.

That bloodline is complicated. I’ve been pouring over the available data, and I can’t quite trace my way through the tangled genealogical pedigree (provided by a descendant of the Fugates) which is viewable at the Indiana University website listed above, not even with the help of this reference: Pedigree Analysis.

The complication stems mostly from the fact that one of Martin and Elizabeth’s children, Zachariah (who was blue) married his mother’s sister. This marriage resulted in a generation of indeterminate number, which included Levi. (Or Levy.) Levi married and produced eight children, including a girl named Luna.

Luna was, perhaps, the bluest of all the Fugates. She gave birth to thirteen children, none of whom were blue. In 1975, however, her great-grandson was born deep blue, in a hospital not far from where Martin and Elizabeth first settled. As he aged, he lost the blue coloration and is thought to be just a carrier.

For more information about the condition itself, you’ll have to wade through the websites I provided, because I’ve developed a massive headache from tracing lines on that chart. (Two bits of pertinent information: 1: the condition is treatable, and medication can eliminate the blue coloration if it is taken daily 2: there doesn’t seem to be any adverse side effects to the condition – most of those who exhibited the color lived long, healthy lives.)

Before I go, I want to offer my personal thoughts about this. Many of the websites to which I didn’t link took an avid, breathless sort of tone which emphasized the fact that this condition came about because of inbreeding. I was offended. It isn’t hard for me to understand how geographical and socioeconomic factors contributed to the spread of this gene.

As a story-teller, I have to wonder if Martin journeyed to Troublesome Creek because there was a family there that would not treat him as an outcast because of the color of his skin. (Even if neither Elizabeth nor Mary were blue themselves, they both must have carried the gene – which suggests to me that somewhere in their family history, there were blue people.) Is it possible that he embarked on a quest to find people who would accept him as he was? And what of Zachariah, who married his aunt? Was he, perhaps, the eldest of Elizabeth’s children, and was Mary, perhaps, a straggler baby in Elizabeth’s birth family? How many children of the appropriate age existed in the community? And how many of those potential mates would accept a blue spouse?

In the end, I guess, there’s no way of knowing why events unfolded as they did. Without knowing, I think it best to reserve moral judgements.

Besides, isn’t it sort of wonderful that there have been – and may still be – blue people in the world?

I am … taken aback.

First, let me express my adoration of Johnny Depp. As a young mother – before I had any way to timeshift a favorite program – I did my damnedest to be in front of  the TV on Sunday nights to watch 21 Jump Street. In the years since, I have seen twenty-four of his forty-two films. I own seven DVDs of his work, and four more are on my movies-I must-someday-own list. You know how some married couples have that ridiculous “free pass” agreement? Yeah. It’s like that.

It’s the quirky, I suppose. And the persona of rebellious independence. And, of course, the impossible good looks. Most endearing, however, is that he regularly stars in decent horror / thriller / fantasy films. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Benny and Joon and Chocolat. He won my heart, though, with his performances in these:

• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• Edward Scissorhands (Don’t tell me that’s not horror.)
• Ed Wood
• The Ninth Gate
• The Astronaut’s Wife
• Sleepy Hollow
• From Hell
• Secret Window
• Sweeny Todd

I still need: Nightmare on Elm Street, Benny and Joon, Ed Wood, and Sleepy Hollow.

That said, I have to confess that I’m refusing to go watch his latest excursion into my genre, Dark Shadows. I’ve seen the trailers, and I am not happy. I suppose I should withhold my judgement until I actually see the thing, but I didn’t want a comedy; I wanted something that maintained the eerie flavor of the soap opera.

When the giant, promotional cut-outs of Barnabas Collins first went up in theater lobbies, I was excited. I am too young to have seen much of the series, and have always regretted that I had missed out. I was eager to get a feel for what it must have been like. I read that Johnny Depp was an aficionado of the original show, so I expected the movie to be an homage, not a parody – and especially not a broad parody. I’m sure I’ll get over it. When I relent – and I will relent eventually – I  imagine I’ll enjoy it for what it is: a silly take on a show to which I have no particular attachment.

Kolchak the Night Stalker, on the other hand? That’s a show I grew up on, and I’m going to be irritated as hell if  they screw it up. There were wonderful flashes of humor in the series, but the meat of it was the way the pragmatic, rumpled, old-school reporter dealt with the monster hunting. The charm of a character like Kolchak (or Columbo … or Barnabus, for that matter) lies in his sincerity. To the audience, he might be a caricature or an archetype, but he sees himself as authentic. There should be no sense of nudge-nudge, wink-wink. These characters are supposed to have a tragic edge.

Having seen the over-the-top, cartoonish depiction of the ’70s, as it appears in the Dark Shadows trailer, I worry about how the same decade will be depicted in Kolchak. I don’t want to see pop-art and high-fashion. The original show (like most of the programs from that era) had a gritty tone, and a mostly neutral palette of grays and tans. Yes, the ties were wide. Yes, he wore a straw hat. But his clothes, his tools, his office – they all felt lived in and real, not like costumes or set pieces.

I worry, too, about how paranormal events and creatures will be presented. In its day, Kolchak used state of the art special effects, when they were necessary. There would be no cleverness in retaining that dated, accidentally-cheesy tone, nor of turning the story into an excuse to showcase today’s most elaborate CGI.

I guess I just don’t want the new movie to turn the old television show into a joke. I don’t want Kolchak to be … well, to be figuratively defanged, the way Barnabus was in Dark Shadows.

I know some of you are photographers. Maybe you too were heart-broken when Google+ gobbled up Picnik, only to spit out a less friendly, less fun, set of free photo editing tools. If so, check out Pixlr. I happily played with both the photo editor and the cool, “retro vintage effects” section. (The interface on that is fascinating.) For the following photographs, I just used the editor to add a credit line, but it looks like there are lots of other useful things there too.

I’ve visited this little cemetery before. From the highway, it appears to be a relatively modern graveyard, but if you wend along a gravel road through the woods  for a little ways, you come to an older, more Irish-Catholic section.

This one is for Kat.
Dr. Kline’s Sanitarium now has apartments for rent.

“Castle Island” in the Rum River.

I’ll be doing full posts about these locations later this month, and there will be more photographs. For now, I just had to share my favorites.

Tonight, on the news, there was a story about a woman who went missing from WBL back in 1997. The case has been reopened because new technology – ground penetrating radar – might reveal bones that were missed fifteen years ago.

As I understand it, the woman was last heard from when she emailed a friend, saying that her husband was about to come home to resume an argument. He was the main suspect in her disappearance (and presumed murder) but there was not enough evidence to charge him.

Sixteen months later, he was convicted of raping and torturing a girlfriend in the same house. He served seven years in prison. Now he lives somewhere in Anoka County. He is not listed among the level 3 sexual offenders living in Minnesota.

“This assessment is based on the type and severity of the crime the individual was convicted of, whether that crime involved violence, the prisoner’s general amenability to treatment, and overall psychological condition. Risk Level 1 represents low-risk (i.e., least likely to repeat offenses); Level 2 is medium risk; and Level 3 is most likely to repeate (sic) offenses.”

Yes. I do intend to find the property. After that? I don’t know. I can’t help but be intrigued, but I think I might be better served by continuing to comb White Bear Lake’s 19th century history as I search for the hidden haunts of this town.

*

When my family decided we wanted to make a new life for ourselves, we chose to move forty minutes due south, to White Bear Lake in Ramsey County, because … well, because this little city has been seducing us for years. My husband and I first came here to have dinner with a pair of interesting writer-acquaintances we had met online. (A decade later, they are dear friends – and now, also our neighbors.) Six years ago, my son got involved with a loosely organized psudo-sword-fighting group which meets in a park here. (The group is still going strong.) A year or so after that, I decided I wanted to find a Unitarian church we could attend. Sure enough, the closest one was in WBL.

Before we knew it, we were traveling here at least twice a week. All those trips to the park and the church meant that I was driving around and through the town often. I found a real bakery, an independent bookstore, and a main street lined with other locally owned small businesses. With each discovery, I became more enamored. Last year, my son’s karate studio opened up a new branch … in White Bear Lake.

In February of 2012, when it was time to leave our old life behind and start over, we came home.

So far, we love it here, but – to be honest – White Bear Lake overwhelms me with its overt wholesomeness. The streets are free of litter; the yards are free of dandelions. Smooth bike paths and sidewalks run alongside lush parks and clean beaches – which are almost always populated by healthy-looking people of all ages and races, most of whom are accompanied by a polite dog or two. In the city proper, there are recycling cans as well as trash bins. There are benches scattered all over town. Hell, some of the businesses put out a clean bowl of water for passing dogs.

Walking the dog near Manitou Island.

If you were to suggest that it all sounds a little like Stepford, you would not be the first. It’s not like that though – I see a fair number of folks that would be considered weird anywhere else I’ve ever lived. Here, though, no one glares at the long-haired, gray-bearded guy who pedals along on his tricycle, not even when his giant American flag hits them in the face as it snaps in his wake. No one stares at out-of-the-norm attire, be it a biker’s dusty leathers or a woman’s jewel-spangled sari. No one looks askance at the strange lady who spends an awful lot of time prowling the local graveyards. (One handsome, fit, middle-aged, property owner helped me find my EMF reader when he discovered me searching for it in the snow. He figured it would be good practice for his trained sniffer dog.)

I was raised in Anoka, a town that should exude the same kind of small-town charm as WBL, because of its similar age and history. The atmosphere there, though, is different. The mood is more suspicious, more depressed. There’s more talk of haunted places and tragic tales. Nothing is quite so clean, no one seems quite so content. Now that I live here – in bright, shiny WBL – I see Anoka’s shadows more clearly.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Anoka too. I love that there is a grave in Oakwood Cemetery for an unknown child who was found at the depot in 1888. I love that the Doctors Kline established a sanitarium there in 1892. I love the fact that Anoka survived five major fires between 1855 and 1884. (And that – after the last, and worst of them - she was rebuilt from brick.)  I love that she considers herself the Halloween Capital of the World.  I love that she is sad, and tired and old and haunted.

But maybe I perceive a certain darkness in my hometown simply because I know her so well. Tonight I am wondering if I will find that White Bear lake, too, has a battered but resilient soul. I’m wondering if she is haunted. If she is, then I’ll be able to settle here.

13. The Addams Famiy – a favorite childhood memory.

12. Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

11. Forever Knight.

10. Fringe – short but effective.

09. Millenium – does anyone besides me remember this show?

08. The X-Files – in truth, the sequence isn’t very creepy … but that music!

07. American Gothic – this is the “series trailer” which isn’t quite the same as the opening sequence I recall, but it’s got the right flavor.

06. American Horror Story – season one. Presumably season two will have a different opening, matched to the new story.

05. Carnivale – beautiful work here, but the real eeriness was in the show itself.

04. Dexter.

03. Tales From the Darkside – this one still gets me right in the creepy spot every time I hear it.

02. True Blood – Some graphic stuff here, kids.

01. The Twilight Zone – nothing will ever take its place in my heart.

Signing off now. Good night all.

Before I muse on my encounter with this insect, though, I want to explain the title of this post.

The Blog ~

Lately, I’ve been pretty consistent about adding a quick, nightly snippet to my Facebook page, even as I’ve let this blog mostly languish. Almost every evening, I think: This could be expanded into a full post. Then I decide that whatever I’m writing about isn’t quite right for the blog. It’s not creepy enough. Or clever enough. Or well-researched enough. Sometimes my thought is simply: No. I’m too tired to put that much time into writing tonight.

I write slow. Every line of text that makes it to the page has been rewritten a half-dozen times. (Curse the convenience of the backspace button.) Here’s a confession: those “quick” Facebook snippets of mine actually require an hour or more. Mostly because there’s always a slightly better way to express a thought.

Then there are the projects for the blog that never seen to come to completion – I’m embroiled in at least three which I intend to write about … as soon as I finish them.

An example? Back on April 17th, I set myself the task of reviewing, sorting and categorizing films based on the works of Stephen King. There’s a hell of a lot of them, however, and I’m having a problem figuring out where to draw the line. Do made-for-TV movies count? Well, they have to, thanks to The Stand, It and Bag of Bones – all of which I have strong opinions about. And what about the short films?

The Paranormal ~

When my daughter was home for a visit, she accidentally reminded me of what I meant to do back when I started this blog. Somehow – perhaps because I’ve since watched too many ghost hunter shows – I had become fixated on finding a reputedly haunted location to investigate in the customary manner, but that is not what I set out to do. In fact, I wanted to do the reverse – I wanted to closely observe places that inspire in me a sense of mystery, melancholy or dread, and write about that experience. The gadgets and tools were meant to be secondary, a way to quantify any phenomena (natural or supernatural) that contribute to an evocative atmosphere. It took my daughter’s insight to show me that I had gotten caught up in a strange set of ghost hunter rules that I felt ill-equipped to abide by. She helped me remember that I have always been less concerned with finding a ghost than with exploring the sensation of being haunted.

The Book ~

I haven’t been writing it. I haven’t been editing it. I haven’t even read any of it in more than a month. I can hardly remember what it felt like to really work with it. I know there were weeks at a time when I wrote fast and hard – come hell or typographical errors – while generating the bulk of my novel. Forcing myself forward felt awful, but pages chugged out of the printer and the manuscript stack thickened every day. Then I started editing the draft, even though I hadn’t finished writing the story. I think that’s when I first veered off the path.

The Whining ~

To be fair to myself, I did okay for a while even after I switched to editing. Then my life blew up (for the fifth or sixth time in the last four years) and I lost sight of the path entirely. But I digress.

The Solution ~

It’s time to renew my battle with perfectionism. I have to start writing again – not editing, writing. I don’t know exactly what that means yet, but I suspect that letting the blog posts come when they want to is part of it … even when my inner critic says, “No, that topic is not right enough.”

The Moth ~

Which brings me back to the hummingbird moth.

My children and I were visiting the nature center in my new hometown. It has the most amazing play area any of us has ever seen – in this case, a photograph will illustrate better than words:

Yes, there are manufactured caves and rocks to climb on. That muddy patch in the foreground hints at the center’s most brilliant feature: an artificial stream that allows children to slap a rock to make water gush forth and run along the bed. On this day, there were only a couple of preschoolers playing, so the stream wasn’t very full … until my children arrived. (They are 16 and 26, by the way.) They not only filled that stream, they also diverted its flow with a dam. (No, they did not interfere with the little ones; they used the empty end of the stream and dismantled the dam when they were done.)

As I watched them play, I saw ghosts of their child-selves in my mind. She’s always been the doer; he’s always been the observer.

Then we noticed an insect – something that looked like a giant bee – buzzing in a nearby flower patch. It didn’t take us long to rule out every species any of us had ever seen. We marveled. We snapped pictures. We moved on.

Later, after we used the internet to identify the insect as a hummingbird moth, and after everyone had gone to bed, I sat on the deck in the dark, listening to a lone alien amphibian calling from the pond below me. (I can identify at least six frogs and toads by their calls. This call was similar to an American Toad but different. Perhaps it was just a particularly large specimen, or one that had some sort of mutation.)

I’ve lived in Minnesota all my life, and spent countless hours outdoors. I’ve grown whole gardens to attract wildlife to observe. I’ve done nature studies in swamps, forests and meadows. I consider myself pretty well-informed about the native fauna of my region. How is it possible, then, that I encountered two unknown (to me) species, in one day, when I wasn’t even looking for them?

Granted, moths and toads are small creatures, which can easily escape notice. But they make me wonder what else is out there that I don’t know about. I keep thinking that all of my outdoor time has been spent in, or very near, well-settled areas.

Suddenly I find myself reconsidering what might be lurking in the Northern Minnesota woods.

*”In Minnesota there are approximately 16.3 million acres of forest land, of which 14.9 million acres are classified as “timberland” or lands capable of producing timber. A geographical depiction of forest land location can be seen on the map. An additional 960,000 acres are not included in productive timberland due to their inclusion in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness or other reserved land category.”

*Source: USDA Forest Service

This is not a good thing. I was warned that this would happen:

From Chapter After Chapter by Heather Sellers, Chapter 20 –

 ”When you’re working on your book, you will undoubtedly be tempted by Fresh Start Sirens. Gorgeous, tantalizing new book ideas will arrive, making juicy promises. These new ideas are going to pop up, assuring you a baggage-free new beginning. They want to lure you away from your existing project, those boring bad days of writing month after month, no end in sight. The Sexy New Book idea always promises it will never be difficult; it will never be a burden. It says it’s way, way more publishable, plus more fun. It whispers, Take me now. I’m all yours.

When this happens: Run. Run as fast as you can in the other direction. Do no get involved with this book!”

I remember reading those words, many months ago, and thinking there was no way I would ever feel the urge to cheat on my beloved baby-witch, Lizzy.

Lately though, Lizzy has been a bitch.

This clown on the other hand – with his smeared greasepaint and his insecurities – is seductive. I’ve been imagining a world in which he could live – a world populated by tattooed, pierced prop artist / roadies, and an acting troupe made up from self-identified vampires, their consenting blood dolls, militant pagans, and other societal drop-outs. There’s a middle-aged, asexual couple with fluid gender-identities too – I think they design the special effects, create the makeups and manage the books. I am in love with them all.

I never have trouble coming up with characters. When it comes to plot, though, it’s a different story. Where’s the conflict? What’s the story arch?

Which brings me to The Traveling Vampire Show. I am pissed off by it’s very existence. The title suggests a brilliant premise – one that encapsulates conflict. We all know carnivals and traveling troupes are creepy. The idea that such a show could conceal real monsters behind nothing more than gel lights and face powder is stunning. The book should write itself.

Years ago, I bought the promisingly titled paperback, rushed home, slipped into a hot bath, and started reading. I vividly remember throwing the damn thing across the bathroom an hour later, thinking: “I could write a better book than THAT!” (‘Turns out that doing so is harder than I thought it would be. I should take this opportunity to offer up a sincere apology to Mr. Laymon, may he rest in peace.)

Even then, I knew I was furious because Richard Laymon didn’t allow the book to write itself. Instead he imposed a graphically violent, verging-on-pornographic, coming-of-age story on it, forever ruining the best title ever conceived.

So now I have my hypnotist clown, and I know he is perfectly suited to being a monster keeper, but his story is stillborn. It doesn’t matter that I want to write The Traveling Vampire Show. It’s been done. And done well enough, by an author famous enough, to win a Bram Stoker award. (How that happened is beyond my ken.) Oh, and it looks like there’s a movie version in production too.

But, I guess, that is a good thing. Because I have to put aside my brown-eyed hypnotist anyway, so that I can crawl back to Lizzy, with declarations of faithfulness on my fingertips.

Maybe I could give him a cameo.

carny photo from Library of Congress

My dream, you see, ended abruptly in the middle of an encounter with an intriguing haunted house performer: a clown / hypnotist.

[For an interesting look at the perils of working as a haunted house performer, check out this post at Huffington Post's Weird News.]

I want to give proper credit for this photo, but can’t find the artist info. I had to use it though, because it’s the closest approximation of my dream clown that I could find.

He was beautiful in a way that isn’t to my usual taste – small, dark, wiry and of some indeterminate, but fully adult, age. His eyes were his most striking feature – with amber-brown irises which had the clear depth of a sunlit pond. He wore a shabby tailcoat, done up in a faded orange and yellow fabric which would have been better suited to upholstering a ’70s era chair. Under the coat, he wore a dirt-smudged, cream-colored Henley shirt and jeans – modern clothes which nonetheless invoked early 20th century carny garb. An untrimmed peacock feather was tucked into the water-stained, citrus-toned ribbon band on his fedora. His makeup was minimal – just a suggestion of traditional paint.

Guiding my group through his tunnel-like section of the fun house, he seemed to take an interest in me, and I caught him marking the hem of my jacket with chalk. When we emerged from the tunnel into a room lined with large, spinning spirals, he launched into a hypnotist’s patter. I deliberately led him to believe I’d be a good target for his schtick – even though I was certain I was unhypnotizable.

Meaning to play along, I was surprised when he was able to partially mesmerize me – a fact I became aware of when I realized he was causing me to have hallucinations even as he thought he was failing to affect me. When I didn’t cooperate he shifted his attention to someone else. I sensed he was embarrassed – perhaps even feeling duped – as he struggled to refocus the crowd on another mark.

I was left to come out of my semi-trance on my own. When my head finally cleared, he was gone. I felt guilty. Amazed that he had been able to affect me at all, I wanted to congratulate him and apologize for making him look bad. I went back to the beginning of his section, but a different clown was waiting at the entrance to the tunnel. Disappointed, I scanned the crowd, but failed to locate him. I was about to leave when I heard his voice bidding the replacement clown a good night. His face was devoid of paint and he had stripped out of the tailcoat and hat, but I recognized his eyes. I realized, then, that I must have been been disoriented for far longer than the few minutes I had thought.

As he swept past, I reached out to stop him. It was too loud for him to hear my apology. I pulled him toward a nearby bench, suddenly convinced I had need of his skill in a paranormal investigation I was conducting. I was about to explain exactly what I needed to him when I woke up.

It’s bugging me. What use would a hypnotist be in a ghost hunt? There’s gotta be a story in there somewhere.

Facts to guide the discussion:

• I am not sensitive to clowns; I neither fear them nor particularly enjoy them.
• I do not believe I can be hypnotized. And I’m not sure if I believe the phenomena is real for anyone.
• The early part of the dream was more traditionally nightmare-ish: fleeing a murderous psycho, a “real” haunted house (as opposed to a fun house), etc. All very exciting.

Let the psychoanalysis begin

This is a detail of an Emmett Kelly portrait, painted by D. L. Rust. (I’ve linked the picture to the artist’s gallery site.) Rust also paints some awesome pin-up girls. (Check out the ‘Artist’s Choice’ tab.)

I didn't know what to make of this when I saw if from a distance.
At first, I thought is was the remnant of a pile of snow, then a strangely located chunk of rough cement - maybe a horribly crumbled headstone?

On closer inspection, I decided it is actually a stump.That's impressive in its own right, because this would have been a big tree, judging by the amount of weathering it shows. But that's not why I have become fixated on the object.

THIS is the detail that I found most fascinating. In a couple of different sections of the stump, I found veins of mineral crystals. Now I need to understand how something like this happens. Did the crystals form inside the tree while it was alive? Is it possible that the stump - which still features sections that feel like wood - is old enough that the mineral deposit formed after the tree fell?
Are there any mineralogists out there?

P.S. What the hell is wrong with the paragraph spacing, all of a sudden???