Birdman Copycats The Shining: Getting the Room 237 Treatment

Cryptokubrology: Birdman Gets the Room 237 Treatment.

A little distraction from 2015.

SI Jinx & the Newsweek Bigfoot Death Curse

Are we beginning to see the unfolding of a "death curse" related to the Special Newsweek Edition entitled Bigfoot, published during November 2015? Do we have a bit of folklore starting comparable to The Sports Illustrated cover curse?

The Sports Illustrated jinx is an urban legend that states that individuals or teams who appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated magazine will subsequently experience bad luck, including even dying. Let's look at the specific cases that have been related to deaths.

May 28, 1956: Indy 500 winner Bob Sweikert was featured on the cover. Less than three weeks later he died in a sprint car crash.
February 18, 1957: Basketball player Jim Krebs was killed by a falling tree during a storm in 1965 at age 29.
May 27, 1957: Race driver Jimmy Bryan, who would win the Indianapolis 500 in 1958, was killed in a race crash in Langhorne Speedway in 1960 at age 34.
May 26, 1958: Race car driver Pat O'Connor appeared on the cover. He died four days later on the first lap of the Indianapolis 500.
March 23, 1959: Prince Aly Khan, featured in a cover story on his race horses, died just over a year later of injuries sustained in a car crash at age 48.
February 15, 1960: After gracing the cover of the Winter Olympics preview issue, Soviet speed skater Gennady Voronin was hampered by injury and finished out of the medals at Squaw Valley. Troubles mounted after he also missed the 1964 games due to injury, as Voronin began to abuse alcohol. Unable to deal with the success of his wife, fellow speed skater and four-time world champion Inga Artamonova, Voronin was convicted of stabbing her to death in 1966 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
March 28, 1960: For a story on wet fly fishing, the cover featured an array of ten images. They included a photo of the fly-tying pioneer James E. Leisenring (1878-1951) and sketches by artist Anthony Ravielli depicting world flycasting champion Johnny Dieckman (at upper right on the cover) and Vernon S. "Pete" Hidy (on the bottom row of the cover). Less than two years later, the 35-year-old Dieckman was one of 87 passengers who perished in the crash of American Airlines Flight 1.
December 26, 1960: President-elect John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy are shown sailing off Cape Cod. The president would be assassinated less than three years later.
February 13, 1961: 16-year-old Laurence Owen, the 1961 U.S. National and North American Figure Skating Champion appeared on the cover as "America's Most Exciting Girl Skater". On February 15, she and the rest of the U.S. figure skating team were killed in a plane crash near Brussels, Belgium while en route to the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
March 26, 1962: Less than 8 months after appearing on the cover, Mexican race driver Ricardo Rodriguez was killed at age 20 in a crash during the first day of practice for the 1962 Mexican Grand Prix.
July 8, 1963: World champion fisherman Jon Tarantino, featured in a cover story on fly casting, was shot to death 10 years later, on 11 June 1973, in a robbery at his family's San
Francisco fish and poultry market.
November 25, 1963: Chicago Bears running back Willie Galimore was killed in a car crash at age 29 along with 28-year-old teammate Bo Farrington on July 27, 1964.
January 28, 1964: The Winter Olympics preview issue marked the second cover appearance for skier Wallace "Buddy" Werner. He finished out of the medals at the 1964 games, and a far worse fate befell him two months later when he was killed in an avalanche near St. Moritz in the Swiss Alps at age 28.
November 23, 1964: A year to the day after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the cover featured a rendering of his personal ski instructor, Helmut Falch of Austria. An accident would later leave Falch paralyzed, though he went on to win four Paralympic gold medals in alpine skiing.
March 15, 1965: Golfer Tony Lema, previously featured on the 23 March 1964 cover, appeared this week in an artist's rendition. In July 1966, the 32-year-old Lema and his wife Betty, 30, were killed along with the two co-pilots when the private plane they chartered to travel between tournaments crashed in Lansing, Illinois.
March 29, 1965: UCLA's Gail Goodrich is shown shooting against Michigan center Bill Buntin during the Bruins' NCAA basketball championship win. Buntin died suddenly three years later of a heart attack while playing a pick-up basketball game at age 26.
December 6, 2000: Race car driver Dale Earnhardt appeared on the cover with his son Dale Jr.. He died two months later on the final lap of the Daytona 500.
May 25, 2015: In an unusual twist on the curse, John Forbes Nash, Jr., subject of a biography and a film titled A Beautiful Mind, died in a car crash the week a headline titled "Chip Kelly's Beautiful Mind" appeared on the cover. The Eagles later fired Kelly on December 29, as the team was 6-9 and was well out of the playoff race. Source.

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The Special Newsweek Edition, Bigfoot: The Science, Sightings and Search for America's Elusive Legend, was released around November 15, 2015, and was to be displayed until January 23, 2016.

Almost immediately, the Bigfoot community had to mourn one of its own, who was included in this special magazine. On February 4, 2016, longtime Texas Bigfoot Research Center member Charles DeVore, 75, of Karnack, Texas, who was spotlighted on pages 12-13 of the Newsweek's Special Edition, died. (See the DeVore obituary here.)

As I observed in my book, Bigfoot: The True Story of Apes in America (2003), some people believe, "To encounter a Bigfoot is to die."

For others that might be translated into "to study Bigfoot is to die."

This early consideration grew out of one often-told story by John Green (born February 12, 1927), who, in writing about the Ruby Creek incident of 1941, mentioned that for “an Indian to see a Sasquatch was believed to be bad luck, in fact the observer was in danger of dying."

Then Ivan Sanderson propelled the “if you see a Bigfoot you die” legend into the lore of the field with a short passage in his 1961 book, Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life. Therein, Sanderson referred to the primary witnesses in the Ruby Creek incident, the Chapmans: “It is just as well that we crossed the Fraser River just when we did, and so met the Chapmans, because about a month afterward they were drowned crossing at the same spot late one night. The irony and tragedy of this event upset me greatly.... The Chapman family at the time of the incident consisted of George and Jeanne Chapman and three children.”

In early 2002, a rumor spread on the Internet that “Roger Patterson died not long after his encounter” of October 20, 1967.  Or those that were involved with the 2001 Skookum cast might be star-crossed, after the deaths of Dr. LeRoy Fisher and Dr. Grover Krantz.

Is there any reality to this sense of bad luck, death, and seeing a Bigfoot? The Patterson-Gimlin film footage was taken in October 1967; Roger Patterson died in January 1972. The Skookum cast was found in 2000, and Fisher and Krantz died in 2002. The Chapmans had their sighting in 1941 and died in 1959--about 18 years later - although the point Sanderson was making is that relatively soon after he interviewed them they died. The folklore lives on.

Writing in Salon in 2001, former Bigfoot researcher Kyle Mizokami wrote: “In my time investigating the hairy linebacker, I expended most of my efforts researching Native American legends about the creature. Many tribes believed in a Bigfoot-type being, and many agreed that to see Bigfoot was a bad sign. Often, someone who actually witnessed Bigfoot would have a run of bad luck, go insane, grow sick or even die. I have always believed that these legends, no matter how fantastic they sounded, had some grains of truth to them. However, the belief of bad luck associated with Bigfoot, while consistent across multiple tribes, was a little too out there, a little too metaphysical for my liking. I wanted facts, not superstition. I didn't know what to do with the bad luck aspect of the legend, so I ignored and eventually forgot about it. Bad idea. Ironically, by ignoring the bad luck theme I had ignored perhaps the most personally relevant ‘fact’ about Bigfoot of all. All that talk of ‘seeing’ Bigfoot (figuratively or otherwise) as being a bad luck sign turned out to be true. It's the scarlet B in action, viewed through the lenses of another culture. It's dozens of ancient cultures collectively sending the warning: ‘Hey, don't get involved with Bigfoot. You will so regret it.’ The warnings were in plain view -- and I completely missed them.” 

The theme of Mizokami’s article is that his association with Bigfoot ruined his social life and "no one will take him seriously anymore." 

Mizokami, of course, extended this folklore into the modern world.

People die. It is part of the human condition. Is this business about a "Bigfoot death curse" tied to special magazine exposure, a new urban legend?

A curse is also called a jinx, hex or execration. Are there predictive indicators that an adversity or misfortune will befall one or more persons aligned with the study of Bigfoot?The examination of curses comprises a significant proportion of the study of both folk religion and folklore. It should be able to be studied and tested.

The list of people overtly named and pictured in the Bigfoot Special Edition is finite. Is there a "Bigfoot death curse"? Here are the individuals in this issue (the page numbers are noted in parentheses). Some of the individuals mentioned in the magazine have already passed away, and that fact is noted, where known.

Vaugh Bryant - ? -  (3)

Al Hodgson - circa 1924 - (11)

Roger Patterson - deceased, February 14, 1933 – January 15, 1972 - (11, 38)

Charles DeVore - recently deceased, 2016, see above (12-13)

Eric Shipton - deceased, August 1, 1907 – March 28, 1977 - (14)

Khunjo Chumbi - deceased? (16)

Edmund Hillary - deceased, July 20, 1919 – January 11, 2008 - (17)

Shelly Williams - born 1956 - (20)

Randy Lee Tenley - deceased, August 26, 2012 - (25)

Bryan Sykes - born September 9, 1947 - (28-29, 60)

Teddy Roosevelt - deceased, October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919 - (36)

Bob Gimlin - born October 18, 1931 - (38)

Sharon Gardner - ? - (41)

Matt Moneymaker - born September 2, 1965 - (41, 53)

Todd May - born 1964 - (44-45)

Rant Mullens - deceased, February 10, 1897 - March 1986 - (48-49)

Cliff Barackman - born, November 28, 1970 - (50, 53, 61)

James "Bobo" Fay - born, April 16, 1961 - (53)

Ranae Holland - (53)

John Bindernagel - born, 1941 - (54, 63)

Ray Wallace - deceased, April 21, 1918 − November 26, 2002 - (56-57)

Les Stroud - born, October 20, 1961 - (58)

Daniel Perez - born, May 31, 1963 - (not pictured, 63)

Doug Hajicek - (not pictured, 65)

John Kirk - born, July 27 (not pictured, 65)

Paul Graves (not pictured, 66)

Ron Morehead - born, June 13, 1942 - (67)

Joe Butcher - born, February 7, 1956 - (71)

Ray Young - May 9, 1940 - July 6, 1999 - (71)

Caitlin Barrett - born, December 11, 1987 - (72)

Ross Malinger - born, July 7, 1984 - (72)

Justin Long - born, June 2, 1978 - (73)

Joey Kern - born, September 5, 1976 - (73)

Jon Heder - born, October 26, 1977 - (not pictured, 73)

Carl Weathers - born, January 14, 1948 - (not pictured, 73)

Rick Dyer - (88)

Matthew Whitton - (not pictured, 88)

Dave Mead - Idaho Nat History Museum, left 2010 - (98-99)

Now you all may do your own tracking, but this is not about any kind of "death pool" game, please note.

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Top Ten Evil Clown Stories of 2015

WARNING: 

NOT FOR

COULROPHOBICS

Top Ten Evil Clowns of 2015
by Loren Coleman, author of The Copycat Effect (New York: Paraview Pocket-Simon and Schuster, 2004).

Following in the tradition of my list from 2008, my notes on evil clowns (and Joker clones) that turned up in 2009, my documenting of real killer clowns in 2010, my list of evil clowns of 2011, weirdness in 2012, another compilation for 2013, and the creepy clown reports in California, countrywide in the USA & in France, ending up back in Aurora for 2014, here is a "top ten" gathering of "evil clown" stories for 2015.

(1) January 31, 2015. Merseyside, UK



Crooks dressed as clowns carried out a string of crimes in Merseyside and police have dealt with 14 incidents - from armed robbery to bogus charity collections - involving people wearing face paint and circus costumes, they reported at the end of the first month of the year.

One of the crimes was caught on camera, when a robber strolled into a currency exchange shop in Walton wearing a yellow wig, white face paint and a pink prosthetic nose and forced a terrified worker to hand over bundles of notes.

Another victim had an egg thrown at his car by a yob wearing a clown mask, reports the Liverpool Echo.

(2) July 2015

Early in July 2015, a Chicagoan took a cellphone video of a person dressed in a clown suit, trespassing at the city's historic Rosehill Cemetery in the dead of night. Julia Graham says she was “freaked out” at the figure as it ran toward the main gate. She and her husband were driving by around 10 p.m.

“When we get closer, we realize it’s a clown, which is super weird,” Graham said.

The first picture her husband snapped was of the clown scaling the 7-foot-tall gate at the Ravenswood Avenue entrance. That feat is no easy task, especially for someone wearing a clown suit. The North Side cemetery was clearly closed and locked for the night. Officials don’t know what to make of it because other than the trespass there were no complaints of vandalism.

(3) July 2015

In July 2015, a 12-year-old Elkhart, Indiana girl fatally stabbed her stepmother, and said an online horror story clown named “Laughing Jack” (pictured) told her to do it, it was revealed in court documents in November. The girl set her family’s apartment on fire and stabbed Maria Torres “at the direction of a fictional character found on the CreepyPasta website known as 'Laughing Jack.’”

Laughing Jack is a clown who befriends children as their imaginary friend before slicing them open and replacing their organs with candy, according to Urban Dictionary. The unidentified Elkhart girl “heard voices and had an 'alter ego' months before the stabbing and begged her father for help,” the court documents said.

(4) August 7, 2015. Hickory, North Carolina.

On Friday, August 7, 2015, a woman living in the 1300 block of 20th Avenue NE in Hickory, North Carolina, reported to police that at 4:32 a.m. a clown with an ax knocked at her residence. The suspect then began swinging an ax and attempted to cut the victim. The clown was wearing a mask and a multicolored wig. She was able to remove his mask and recognized him as an acquaintance before he left, according to the Hickory Daily Record. An arrest warrant was issued. Jimmy Daniel Raybon (pictured above), 28, also known as Robert Gross, turned himself in without incident at 2:15 p.m.


(5) September 2015. Las Vegas, Nevada.

Some people thought it was funny, but it is amazing no one shot the "killer" clowns that were scaring folks around the Las Vegas Valley in September of this year.

Matteo Moroni, the famous prankster behind DM Pranks in Italy, teamed up with Fright Dome-owner Jason Egan to bring the "killer clowns" to Nevada. They set up "crime scenes" with creepy clowns nearby and waited for real people to walk into the situations.

In the video, the clowns hang out in a gas station, the long hallways of Circus Circus and in an ambulance behind the hotel-casino. Each time an unsuspecting person or group walks into the created scenario and are scared almost into having heart attacks. Not funny.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article30923304.html#storylink=cpy

(6) October 2015. Kent, UK

"Clowns in vans chasing terrified children spark warning 'go straight home after school today and not to loiter,'" reported the Daily Mirror. ""Police are investigating after numerous reports of kids being approached by people wearing clown masks driving a van."

Phantom Clowns stalked St. John's Road in Kent. The incidents started after several reports in Tonbridge. On October 5 in Hectorage Road, pupils reported they were scared by people in clown masks.On October 7 and 8 there were also reports of a woman in the High Street wearing a clown mask. The following week in Tunbridge Wells, on October 13 and 14 there are reports of people wearing clown masks in a van on St John's Road. Some witnesses said the clowns wore black clothing and white masks.

No one was ever caught. (These are the classic Phantom Clowns that I discussed in Mysterious America.)

(7) October 15, 2015. Springfield, Missouri.

Police say they arrested a 30-year-old man on October 15, after he dressed as clown, carried a toy gun onto Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, and claimed he had a bomb and was going to take a hostage. James D. Robertson (pictured) was charged with making terroristic threats. Police found Robertson in a parking lot at the college. He told them he was formerly a student at the college and wanted to return but school officials ignored him. Robertson told police he dressed like a clown and carried a toy gun in order to make school officials pay attention to him. They did. Robertson did not have a car bomb. In the trunk of his car, police found a bag of charcoal with a note that said: "This is my CAR bomb!"

(8) November 24, 2015. Waukesha, Wisconsin.

This turns out to be merely unsettling, not evil. Around Thanksgiving 2015, the media began noting there were sightings of a man dressed up as a clown walking around Carroll University campus, Waukesha, Wisconsin. Some people, who said it was "creepy," took photographs. Waukesha police say they know who it is. Waukesha police told the local media the teenage boy is "developmentally delayed and is just doing this to see people's reaction. Both he and his parents were advised several times it would really help us out if he wouldn't stand out there doing that."

Police say they aren't aware of any crimes the teen has committed.

(9) December 24, 2015. Lakewood, Colorado. 

The ultimate costumed clown around Christmas, of course, is Santa Claus. In 2015, an evil Santa emerged near Denver. A stabbing suspect was on the loose Christmas Eve in Lakewood, Colorado, after allegedly stabbing a bus passenger early Thursday morning, December 24, 2015. At around 1 a.m., two people were riding an RTD bus when they got into a fight that ended when one of the passengers -- who police say was wearing a Santa Claus jacket -- stabbed the other. The suspect remains on the run. (For an infamous recent Killer Santa case, see the 2013 Pardo-Corvina story.)

(10) The Joker resurfaces

American University Press published a book of some note on the subject of evil clowns. Appearing in 2015, The Joker: A Serious Study of the Clown Prince of Crime, edited by Robert Moses Peaslee and Robert G. Weiner, is the first academic work to provide a comprehensive study of this villain dressed like a clown, illustrating why the Joker appears so relevant to audiences today.

In a related vein, Suicide Squad is an upcoming American superhero film based on the DC Comics antihero team of the same name. It is scheduled to be released on August 5, 2016. One of the most significant characters in the forthcoming movie is the Joker, being played by Jared Leto. During 2015, photos of Leto as the new Joker caused quite a stir. 

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Top Ten Evil Clown Stories of 2015

© Loren Coleman, 2015

Will ISIS Attempt A Red Dawn?

Will December 18, 2015 be a new Colorado Aurora (which translates, literally, into Red Dawn‬), when Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens? 

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We have been down this road before. 

For more on the overlap between ISIS/ISIL and Star Wars, and this prediction, please read more here.

Synchromystic Of The Year 2015: Will Morgan

The Twilight Language is giving its Second Annual "Synchromystic Of The Year" Award to William "Will" Morgan on November 24, 2015. This is an honor that will be bestowed upon a deserving individual every year who has contributed to the broad dissemination of a better understanding of the objectives and goals underpinning the field of synchromysticism.

"Synchromysticism: The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance." ~ Jake Kotze, The Brave New World Order, August 18, 2006.

For those unaware, or reading about synchromysticism for the first time, please see more information, including the formal definitions, posted here.

The Synchromystic of 2015 ~ Will Morgan ~ was chosen for his outstanding sync contributions, his grounded body of work in the service of synchromystic intellectual pursuits, and to encourage him to continue to add his sense of humor and insights to the field.

Every year, a unique artifact from the past and/or present is awarded. This year, it is a stein that was created in 1991 to celebrate the John Wayne cinema classic, Flying Tigers. The tradition of how these awards are chosen is as follows. I decide upon the recipient and then take my time drifting through local antique stores, until a special object drops into my grasp.

When I picked this Flying Tigers stein for Morgan, I was unaware of an amazing series of syncs to him that I would discover in researching the background of this movie.

First, I did choose it as Morgan is involved in the film end of synchromysticism, although it was counter-indicated that I would have come to me a "major movie star" stein. But then, something was going on here. Considering that Will Morgan is one of the producers of the synchromystic classic podcast, 42 Minutes, I was not surprised to find the film Flying Tigers was released in October 1942.

Furthermore, before long, as I went deeper into this rabbit hole, I was alerted to a name game, almost immediately. I am well-aware that the early World War II air unit, the Flying Tigers, would evolve into what today we know as parts of the OSS, CIA, Air America, Slick Airways, and FedEx. What I did not know is that there is a direct line of dots linking the Flying Tigers, John Wayne, super spy William Pawley, Panama, and double agent William Morgan (not our Will Morgan, please note).

William Morgan and Frank Sturgis (yes, the Bay of Pigs, Watergate burglar Sturgis) were friends. Morgan secretly had planned an invasion of Panama from Cuba in 1959, and wanted Sturgis to be his second in command.

Sturgis told Paul Meskil:

An FBI report on Sturgis was generated on April 6, 1959, at Miami, Florida. On April 7, 1959, Sturgis was of interest to the St. Louis, Missouri, FBI Office. [Field 97-109] The Norfolk, Virginia, FBI Office filed a report on Sturgis dated April 13, 1959. [Field 97-13] On April 18, 1959, a ship carrying 35 of "Morgan's Raiders" sailed from Cuba toward Panama. On April 18, 1959, after receiving a report that the invasion ship had left from apart under William Morgan's control, the Panamanian Government order [Tony] Arias' arrest. Panamanian authorities found that John Wayne had deposited $525,000 in Arias' bank account between November 19, 1957 and April 5, 1959. John Wayne said he was partners with Arias in a shrimp-exporting business. Six days later the crew landed and were taken into custody by Panamanian authorities. Sturgis associate Alexander Rorke was waiting to rendezvous with the group. Sturgis and William Morgan were arrested in Cuba. William Morgan was soon released.

Sturgis continued:

The Panama thing went bad in the latter part of February 1959 and everyone was on their guard. This wasn't sanctioned by Fidel, it wasn't sanctioned by anybody. And none of the assholes that went on this invasion were rebels, they hadn't been in the mountains, they all had shorten air. The guy that organized the Panama invasion was William Pawley. He suckered John Wayne's people and everybody into the thing. Pawley met him when they were making a movie about the Flying Tigers. Source.

William Douglas Pawley (September 7, 1896—January 7, 1977) was a U.S. ambassador, a noted businessman and associated with the Flying Tigers American Volunteer Group (AVG) during World War II. In 1941, with his brothers Edward and Eugene, he was involved with the organization and support of the 1st American Volunteer Group, popularly known as the Flying Tigers.  Postwar, Pawley was an active member of the Republican Party. A close friend of both President Dwight Eisenhower and Central Intelligence Agency director Allen W. Dulles, he took part in a policy that later become known as Executive Action, a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power.His final residence was in Miami Beach, Florida, where he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, in January 1977.

William Morgan is an important, if not shadowy figure in the world occupied by Flying Tigers and the CIA. When he was 18, he enlisted in the Army and was sent to the Atsugi Army-Air Force base, in Japan, the same location where Lee Harvey Oswald would be court-martialed a decade later.

Morgan

went AWOL at least twice, was court-martialed on Nov. 7, 1947, and thrown into the Kyoto stockade for three months. He promptly escaped after overpowering a guard and stealing his uniform and weapon. Recaptured, he was again court-martialed, found guilty of escape, assault and robbery, and sentenced to five years of hard labor.
Declared a “recalcitrant military prisoner,” Morgan was transported to the maximum-security disciplinary barracks at Camp Cooke, Calif. (today Vandenberg Air Force Base). At Camp Cooke, he entertained other prisoners by spinning fanciful stories about his being a direct descendant of another William Morgan who, in 1826, became quite notorious after vanishing from his upstate New York home. Source.

The presumed Masonic death of that William Morgan (1774–1826?) caused the forming of the Anti-Masonic Party. He...

was a resident of Batavia, New York, whose disappearance and presumed murder in 1826 ignited a powerful movement against the Freemasons, a fraternal society that had become influential in the United States. After Morgan announced his intention to publish a book exposing Freemasonry's secrets, he was arrested on trumped-up charges. He disappeared soon after, and is believed to have been kidnapped and killed by some Masons.

The super spy William Morgan was applauded by Fidel Castro, in Havana in 1959.

 "Morgan’s first several months in Cuba are shrouded in mystery, but if one is to believe the highly fictionalized account of his life portrayed in Alex Abella’s novel, The Great American, an unwitting Morgan was literally recruited off Havana’s streets for work with the CIA," says the entertaining and rather complete overview in "William Morgan: Patriot or Traitor?" (See also JFK Operation.)

After being funded by Castro, to farm frogs, William Morgan was executed by the Castro regime on March 11, 1961, apparently for being a double agent working for the CIA.

That's how sync-ing works. Grab a Flying Tigers stein for Will Morgan, and the floodgates of other William Morgans open up.

For more complete insights into who is our synchromystic Will Morgan is a current Denver resident, born on July 25, 1978, as was Louise Joy Brown, the world's first in-vitro human or so-called "test tube" baby.  For more on Morgan, please read the following biography sent in by Morgan, with assists from Alan Green and Andras Jones:

Synchromysticism discovered Will Morgan in 2008 and in the ensuing years he has established himself as one of the foundational figures of the “Sync” movement. He was one of the original members of The Sync Whole, writing as "A Few Shots to Shaman" and was published in The Sync Book Vol. 1. Will and Douglas Bolles co-host 42 Minutes, the flagship podcast from Sync Book Radio, where Will has researched and interviewed many of the luminaries in the field of sync while ensuring the community is inclusive and accessible to newcomers. As a filmmaker, Morgan has developed a unique style of Sync Film focusing on lesser known film personae (as opposed to major movie stars). His collaborations with Andras Jones, whose own filmography Will explored in a groundbreaking three-part Sync Film (the first ever to be hosted on an actor's IMDB page) have led to the exploration of artists as diverse and strange as Rose McGowan, Keith Coogan, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Nik Stahl, The Posies, Negativland & Viggo Mortensen. Will Morgan continues his quest to make Sync more accessible to the people who make the cinematic art product we consume through his continued work with syncbook.com and radio8ball.com.

What is 42 Minutes? It is a lively weekly conversation, hosted by Douglas Bolles and Will Morgan, in which they discuss "the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything" with intriguing authors, thinkers, sychromystics and philosophers of our day. The show has its genesis in a series of discussions regarding The Sync Book, of which both hosts are authors.

Will Morgan was one of the speakers at this event in 2014. 

Will Morgan is one of the contributors to 

The Sync Book: Myths, Magic, Media, and Mindscapes: 26 Authors on Synchronicity

Place your John Wayne/Flying Tigers stein in a location of honor, Will Morgan. With all good humor, sync and seriousness, congratulations!

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See also "Synchromystic Of The Year 2014: Alan Abbadessa-Green."

George Barris, Batmobile Creator, Dies on BTTF Day

Syncs in time have a way of catching up with people. Synchrocinematic ones are often rather special.

The man credited with being the Batmobile's creator and developer has died on November 5, 2015.  That's quite a coincidence.  This same individual had a checkered history of softly promoting himself in the same fashion as he did with the Batmobile, with the Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine. And it is on a famed "BTTF Day" on which he has died - November 5, 2015.

George Barris and the Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine

These are photos of VIN 02831, converted by George Barris into a Back to the Future car....The photos show it on display at the Grand National Roadster Show in San Mateo, 2003.
The first [at top of this posting] and last photos are of display photos placed with the car. The first one is of Barris posing with the VW modified car (or what's left of it). This 'car' is sitting on the backlot of Universal Hollywood. The last photo is an old picture of Steven Spielberg with the #1 BTTF car. That's the car you first see at 'Twin-Pines Mall' in the movie. Universal still owns that car and it is serviced by the DeLorean Motor Center.
Bob Gale went on record at the Pigeon Forge DeLorean Car Show stating "George Barris had nothing to do with the making of the Back to the Future DeLoreans". The car was recently sold (5/2005) at auction for $40,250. Source.

Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine Controversy

Over a decade after the release of Back to the Future Part III, one of the DeLorean time machines stunt cars used in the film was sent to Barris for restoration purposes to be put on display at the Petersen Auto Museum in Los Angeles. The car was returned to Universal Studios in 2003. Barris later purchased a stock DeLorean DMC-12 and converted it into a time machine, which he used to promote himself and his company. While Barris never officially stated that he had anything to do with the Back to the Future films, he did like to indulge in stating that he had built a Back to the Future DeLorean time machine, but never disclosed that it was a replica car.
In 2007 Universal Studios officials sent Barris a cease and desist order demanding that he never again make misrepresentations regarding any involvement with the Back to the Future films. They called upon Barris to remove images of the flying DeLorean from his company's website and restrict his display of replicas of the gull-wing car used by Michael J. Fox in the popular 1985 movie and its sequels. Back to the Future writer/producer Bob Gale went on record stating that "George Barris had absolutely nothing to do with the design or construction of the DeLorean time travel vehicle. "The DeLorean was designed on paper by Ron Cobb and Andrew Probert, and it was built under the supervision of special effects supervisor Kevin Pike and construction coordinator Michael Scheffe."
Barris also came under fire from DeLorean automobile historians, when he proclaimed in a 2003 interview with Maxim magazine that he worked with John DeLorean on the actual car. Barris also had no involvement with the original DeLorean Motor Company and it's sole automobile the DMC-12.

George Barris dies on November 5, 2015.

George Barris was married to Shirley Nahas from 1958 until her death in 2001. They had two children. He died on November 5, 2015, in his sleep at his home in Encino, California, at the age of 89.

 11054 (= flipped, it was 4+5 = 9/11), in Bell, California

George Barris, the creator of the Batmobile and other TV and movie vehicles, died Thursday [November 5, 2015], his son, Brett, announced on Facebook. He was 89.
“Sorry to have to post that my father, legendary kustom car king George Barris, has moved to the bigger garage in the sky,” his son wrote. “He passed on peacefully in his sleep at 2:45 am. He was surrounded by his family in the comfort of his home. He lived his life they way he wanted til the end.”
Along with designing the Batmobile driven in the ’60s “Batman” TV show, Barris also designed the Green Hornet’s car, the “Beverly Hillbillies” jalopy, the Munster Koach and K.I.T.T. from “Knight Rider.”
The car customizer’s first shop was Barris Kustom Shop located on Imperial Highway in Bell, Calif. It was later moved to Lynwood, Calif., but Barris continued his association with North Hollywood, Calif. Barris Kustom Industries remains there. Source.

The significant of November 5th in Back to the Future... and beyond.

Alan Kistler in Newsarama, in 2010, wrote:

When Marty checks the newspaper, the date says that it is Saturday November 5, 1955. It is accurate that November 5, 1955 was a Saturday and this was deliberately researched. In different interviews, Bob Gale has explained that he wanted to make sure that Marty’s arrival date was on a Saturday so that he would run into his parents during the day and not have to wait until they were out of school and so it would be more realistic that he could hide the DeLorean on a construction site and not have it be discovered because no one would be working that day. Likewise, it is accurate that November 12, 1955 also falls on a Saturday, a day that seemed likely for a school to have a dance. Gale chose November as the month because he believed it would be reasonable for a school to have a large, formal dance towards the end of the semester.
November 5 is Guy Fawkes Day and in 1955 it was also the day that racial segregation was outlawed on trains and buses in Interstate Commerce in the U.S.A. By sheer coincidence, it is also the birthday of [screenwriter] Bob Gale’s father. Source.

This is the model of the DeLorean Time Machine that came into my life on November 5, 2015. For more that, and other information on November 5th and Back to the Future, click here.

It's 9/11 - the 9th of November

In most places in the world, today's date is written 9-11, for it is the 9th day of November.

Three male bombers (allegedly all Iraqis) and 57 bystanders were killed at three hotels - the Grand Hyatt Hotel, the Radisson SAS Hotel, and the Days Inn - in Amman, Jordan, on 9 November 2005.  Al-Qaeda in Iraq immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Today is the 10th anniversary of that event.

On 9 November 2015, a Jordanian police officer picked this day to kill two American contractors and a South African contractor at King Abdullah Special Operations Training Center near the capital, Amman, Jordan's official Petra news agency reported. 

The gunman had been fired.

Four Jordanians and two American were also wounded in today's incident.

Jordanian security forces killed the shooter.

No members of the U.S. military, who cycle through the training center, were involved in the shooting, the U.S. official said.

"We are in contact with the appropriate Jordanian authorities, who have offered their full support," a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Jordan told CNN. "We will report more information when available and appropriate."

This date, 9 November, is also the traditional date, in 1989, tied to the "Fall of the Berlin Wall."

On another the 9th of November, in 1965, the Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, set himself on fire in front of the United Nations building.

On 9 November 694, at the Seventeenth Council of Toledo, Egica, a king of the Visigoths of Hispania, accused the Jews of aiding Muslims, sentencing all Jews to slavery.

Real Animal Attacks 2015!

CBS's Zoo television series began June 30, 2015. 

It is almost as if the program saw into the future.

Discovery's Shark Week, the real kind, apparently already began.

There is something going on with the animals. There have been recent attacks by sharks, alligators, sturgeon, lion, tiger, and leopard. Despite the warning signs, in some cases, the humans ventured forth into these encounters.


Sharks

An increase of shark attacks, especially along the Carolina coasts, during the summer of 2015 has not gone unnoticed. The number is large enough for sharks to become a media story. Last time this happened? In which sharks became a media focus? 2001.

The most recent attack was ironic because it was against a past member of the media.

A former editor-in-chief at The Boston Herald suffered serious injuries after he dramatically tried to fight off a 7-foot shark Wednesday [July 1, 2015] off the coast of North Carolina.
Andrew F. Costello reportedly came face-to-face with the monster while vacationing with his family at the coastal town of Ocracoke.
Costello, 68, was swimming with his son around noon when the attack occurred.
"I could see from where I was standing that he had a big baseball-sized chunk of flesh taken off of his leg right above his knee and there was a lot of blood everywhere," Jackson Fuqua, 15, who witnessed the attack, told The Boston Herald.
“I saw a big trail of blood from the water to where the man was laying down on a beach towel. There were a lot of EMS workers all around him and they were frantically trying to help him and work to close the wounds he had,” Fuqua told the paper.
Costello suffered wounds to his ribcage, lower leg, hip and hands, according to the paper. He is reportedly in fair condition at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville.

The synchromystic world actually started talking about the "shark imagery" back in February 2015.

Credit: Keys to Cosmic Doorways.

In 2015, on the Sunday after July 4th, it becomes "Shark Week" on the Discovery Channel. 

Few remember that during 2001, the "Summer of the Shark" began on the 4th of July.

Shark attacks generally get more attention by the media than most news. Except for mass shootings, school shootings, workplace violence, and terrorist attacks.

Time Magazine in 2001 acknowledged it was “The Summer of the Shark,” even though statistically, there were less attacks than in some other years.

Alligators

But there was something more sinister waiting in the wings - 9/11, of course. First, however, another animal got the headlines; the "Summer of the Gator" happened too in 2001.

In my twilight language book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004), I noted the unfolding of the "if it bleeds, it leads" focus on shark and alligator attacks. The media, almost completely, forgot about animal encounters after the Twin Towers came down. Terrorism and war were the new wall-to-wall coverage for months.

The news for 2015 is now shifting to alligator attacks too.

Word reached me from the director of Southern Fried Bigfoot that a violent encounter with an alligator occurred on June 28, 2015, at Charlotte Lake, Cedar Hill Park, Wallisville, Texas. A 13-year-old boy, Kaleb, was swimming near the shore when bitten in the arm and leg by an alligator. The gator also began to pull him under the water. Kaleb's father, James Hurley, jumped in the water, kicked the alligator off his son, and pulled Kaleb to safety. Both Kaleb and James Hurley are recovering at the hospital. Source.

Seventy-five miles away, also in Texas, there was an alligator fatality early Friday morning, July 3, 2015.

Tommie Woodward, 28, (pictured above, from his Facebook page) suffered severe trauma to a limb when he was attacked early Friday morning at the private marina, which is along a bayou extending from the Sabine River near the Louisiana line, Orange, Texas, police Captain Robert Enmon reported. The alligator was estimated to be 11 feet long.

The owners of the marina recently had spotted a large alligator on a few occasions, and put up a sign warning people to stay out of the water, police said. Woodward reportedly when told this, yelled out "F*ck the alligators," and jumped in.

According to the Beaumont Enterprise, the incident was the first fatal attack by an alligator in Texas in about 200 years.

Cody

Then on Saturday, July 4, 2015, an 8-foot alligator grabbed Mike Karris' 11-year-old dachshund, Cody, at the boat ramp in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. Karris and his girlfriend were unable to rescue their dog. The last attack on a dog was more than 15 years ago. Source.

Sturgeon

There's also a problem with leaping sturgeon. In Florida, boaters are infrequently, but routinely hurt by sturgeon jumping from rivers and colliding into people in boats.

On May 23, 2015, on the Santa Fe River, a sturgeon crashed through a boat windshield, injuring the driver of a boat. Early in June 2015, a sturgeon in the Suwanee River in Manatee Springs State Park jumped into a boat with 14-year-old Heavyn Nash and knocked her unconscious. Nash was fishing with her mother and grandfather when the 4- to 6-foot fish decided to join them.

A jumping sturgeon on the Suwannee River. Florida Fish and Wildlife

Then on July 2, 2015, a fatality took place. A 5-year-old girl was killed after a sturgeon leaped out of a northern Florida river and struck her while she was boating with her family, state wildlife officials said. Jaylon Rippy died after getting hit by the fish on the Suwannee River, south of Lake City, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said in a statement posted on the Suwannee Democrat Bulletin. Her mother, Tanya Faye Rippy, and 9-year-old brother, Trevor Rippy, were injured by the sturgeon, as well.

On Friday, July 3, 2015, two adults traveling in a boat on the Santa Fe River between the Suwannee River and a Branford area campground were also struck by a leaping sturgeon, Fish and Wildlife Commission officials said in a statement.

Lion, Tiger, and Leopard

Big cats have been in the news too.

The lion that would kill was photographed moments before the attack, by another tourist (above) and by the victim (below).

On June 1, 2015, New Yorker Katherine Chappell, 29, was killed by a lion when she rolled her window down to take photographs. This occurred at the Lion Park, near Johannesburg, South Africa that had clear signs warning its visitors.

Clear signs prohibiting open windows are found at the park.

Chappell was as an Emmy-award-winning visual-effects artist on HBO’s Game of Thrones. She also had worked on Captain America and Godzilla.

The white tiger at the zoo before its escape.

An escaped zoo white tiger killed a 43-year-old warehouse worker on June 17, 2015. Police then shot and killed the white tiger in Tbilisi, Georgia. Severe flooding allowed hundreds of wild animals to escape the city zoo in this country that was part of the former Soviet Union. The tiger attack happened at a warehouse in the city center. The animal had been unaccounted for since the weekend floods destroyed the zoo premises. Doctors said the man was attacked in the throat and died before reaching the hospital. Source.

A leopard attack on July 2, 2015, also occurred in South Africa. A guide at South Africa's most famous national park, Kruger National Park, survived a leopard attack after a tourist scared the animal away with his car.

The incident occurred Thursday afternoon at the wild animal game park as the guide drove an Open Safari Vehicle (OSV) past some leopards. One of the leopards was the vehicle's group of people lost sight of it. The leopard had gone around to the driver's side and jumped at the guide, clamping down on his arm.
"Everybody in the OSV started hitting the leopard with any object they had with them," the park said.
A tourist driving another vehicle raced over and used the truck to scare away the leopard.
"We would like to thank the tourist from another vehicle for his quick and decisive action as he saved the guide and tourists' lives," park general manager William Mabasa said in the statement.
The guide was treated for his injuries. Source.

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