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.
We'd assume this was from a production of Dracula, if college yearbooks weren't such occult objects. From the Lycoming yearbook of 1980. See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.
A funny inkling led us to zoom in on the head of the glowing figure. Sure enough, she has a terrifying skull face. This phantom haunts Guilford's 1990 yearbook.
“I have always had a thing about old photographs. The older pictures have an uncanny ability of suggesting that there is another world where the departed are. A black and white photograph is a document of an absence, and is almost curiously metaphysical. I have always hoarded them. They represent a sense of otherness. The figures in photographs have been muted, and they stare out at you as if they are asking for a chance to say something.” —W.G. Sebald, The Questionable Business of Writing
Here's a college graduate depicted as "A Freak L.S. (Living Skeleton)." From the Codex yearbook of Beloit College, 1893. See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost
sense of immediacy. We follow the founder of the Theater of
Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then
flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free. The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
To understand how to use printed skulls like these for powerfully magical purposes, see How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook. From The Cornhusker Yearbook of the University of Nebraska, 1916.
