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.
Here's our demonstration of three unusual ways to enhance the mystery of a spooky old house. Please show your support with a thumb-up and by sharing the link with your friends who are into old dark houses and urbex adventures.
Wolf said: “This world is made of clouds and of the shadows of clouds. It is made of mental landscapes, porous as air, where we are as trees walking, and as reeds shaken by the wind.”
But the skull answered, “To turn the world again into mist and vapour is easy and weak. To keep it alive, to keep it real, to hold it at arm’s length, is the way of gods and demons.”
Wolf cried out: “There is no reality but what the mind fashions out of itself. There is nothing but a mirror opposite a mirror, and a round crystal opposite a round crystal, and a sky in water opposite water in a sky.”
“Ho! Ho!” laughed the hollow skull. “I am alive still, though I am dead; and you are dead, though you’re alive. For life is beyond your mirrors and your waters. It’s at the bottom of your pond; it’s in the body of your sun; it’s in the dust of your star spaces; it’s in the eyes of weasles and the noses of rats and the pricks of nettles and the tongues of vipers and the spawn of frogs and the slime of snails. Life in me still; and honey is sticky and tears are salt, and yellow-hammers’ eggs have mischievous crooked scrawls!”
—From the divine Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys [with slight edits for brevity]
Here's a conversation of a preface in which the author mentally has a line and the reader does, too. From Ghost Stories and Phantom Fancies by Hain Friswell, 1858.
Just as the goddess Diana showed that the hunter and the stag are one, this vintage window display shows that the pumpkin and the knife are one in the jack-o'-lantern. From One Hundred Easy Window Trims, 1913.
Here's a frightful example of a text not reading its reader's mind. It even predicts that you don't live in a painted caravan and stare into a crystal ball for hours (we do!) and that you aren't a mind reader (we are!). It's a classic case of "what you say about others is what you mean about yourself." From Baked Beans & Somtam by Rick Kirtland, 2016.
Here's a title page that wonders about the identity of its own author. Plus, note the genre, which is our own personal favorite: "serio-ludicro, tragico-comico."
Haunted mirrors are to be avoided when you visit an antiques store (unless, of course, chancing upon such objects is your very purpose). When consulted to appraise a mirror's hauntedness, the first thing we look for is imperfections in the glass or silvering. Notice in the unretouched photographic illustrations how a peculiar mirror has a deformity that warps the face of any Narcissus who approaches it. A thing of horror — and beyond question profoundly haunted. A more subtle issue we look for is a discrepancy between what is reflected and what is actually in the room. This requires very careful looking at details within both worlds, and it can be helpful to take photographs of the mirror world from as many angles as possible so as to study them at leisure. We then look at the back of the mirror for a manufacturer's mark (for example, "Pairpoint Mfg. Co., Quadruple Plate, June 28, 1904"), and if such a mark is upside down, the mirror has been hung "inverted," making it more susceptible to negative powers. Knowing some history about the mirror can be crucial; for example, had the mirror previously been in a room with a dying person? For novices, perhaps the easiest method to determine a mirror's hauntedness is to look into it at night by candlelight. There's little guesswork in such an approach—you'll know!
