CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
Q: "Ghosts that glide along the shadows—canst thou conjure spirits here? Unfamiliar forms and faces—hast thou stolen these from time?" ("Reverie" by Rennell Rodd, in Time, A Monthly Miscellany of Interesting and Amusing Literature, 1884.)
Upon encountering an old poem ("The Haunted Room" by Emma Marie Caillard, in The Lost Life, and Other Poems, 1889), we thought of this trivia question: What is the haunted mansion within Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, and how many chambers does it have? The answer is the old attic bride's heart, with four chambers. In the poem, the heart is not consumed by sorrow but remains unchanged and loving (explaining the Mansion bride's intact organ), home to and haunted by the ghosts of friends who have passed away.