Small Confession

I am done with teenage-love Eric on True Blood. I was not overjoyed with it in the first place, but I saw how it worked thematically.

Tonight?

I literally cannot understand how Sookie can sleep with him.

I miss the Eric you thought was on the verge of breaking the 4th wall to wink at you.

The only way this storyline can possibly redeem itself for me is if he admits he’s been faking being mind-wiped for the past two episodes or so.

Otherwise, when he comes to, when he sees that Sookie could only love him like that, I hope he’s disgusted.

Warning: Extremely Creepy Kid Thingy In Photos Below

I have two things to say about Mt. Olivet Cemetery, excluding the vandalism. 1. It’s a hoot to walk through all the gravestones and recognize names because of street names in town. 2. I like the creepy gothic open look on tombs, just not with little kids stuck in them. See below, if you dare.

Edited to add: Also, creepy teddy bear. Be warned.

The Thing, Revisited

I have lollygagged my afternoon away with a cemetery and ice cream. The vandalism at Mt. Olivet is really bad, not just Ben Allen’s family. And there was a weird smell all afternoon that I just now realized is me. Oops, sorry Professor. The bigger question is why my car smells like cigarette smoke lately. Perhaps it’s taken up smoking. I don’t know.

Right, The Thing.

In Forty Years of Psychic Research: A Plain Narrative of Fact  by Hamlin Garland, we read a recount of Itta K. Reno’s summation of an encounter with a beast summoned at a seance. (I looked Ms. Reno up in the census and Itta K. Reny was a real person who lived a few blocks from the Allens.) She and her seance-y friends had accidentally conjured up this beast. A lawyer heard about it and scoffed.

“With a snort of derision, the lawyer sceptic [sic] replied, ‘I’m going to prove that there’s neither cat nor dog under the table.’

“Getting down on the floor he began to feel about with his hand. Suddenly, with a yell, he scrambled to his feet, caught up his hat, and rushed from the house. On the following day he explained his panic. ‘A huge hairy beast hurled itself against me–a brute, of enormous power. It followed me all the way home.'”

Garland later hears from Judge John M. Dickinson that he also heard that story and knows the group under discussion. I found a lawyer John M. Dickinson boarding at the Maxwell House in 1880, but I can’t quickly find him in later censuses.

But I think that’s got to be the Allens and their Thing, don’t you? How many not-dog/not-cat manifestations can their have been among ritzy Nashvillians at the turn of the century?

Well, truly, who knows? Maybe they were just conjuring up spirit animals left and right.

I wonder where The Thing is now?

A Coincidence that I Wish Meant Something

The first written account of the Bell Witch appeared in 1887, describing events that started in 1817.

Adelicia Acklen was borin in 1817 and died in 1887.

In other news, don’t even think we’re done talking about “The Thing.”

Edited to add: Meaning, I think I’ve found an account of an encounter with The Thing. More after I’m done lollygagging the afternoon away.