"Haunted" Naval Air Station Pensacola's Mass Shooting

Two days after the Pearl Harbor shooting, a day before Pearl Harbor, there has been a mass shooting incident at the Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida. It should be noted since 1825, the area designated for the Pensacola Navy Yard "is said to be haunted by a light keeper murdered by his wife."

An unidentified gunman opened fire inside the Naval Air Station Pensacola on Friday, December 6, 2019, killing at least two person and injuring several others.

The shooting is over, the Escambia County, Florida, Sheriff's Office said, and the shooter has been confirmed dead.

Source.

Family members have identified Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, a recent graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, as one of the victims of Friday’s shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola.

In The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit, Jim Brandon writes, regarding the overall "name game":

I'm not talking here of such spooky tongue-twisters as H.P. Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth or Arthur Machen's Ishakshar, but of quite ordinary names like Bell, Beall and variants, Crowley, Francis, Grafton, Grubb, Magee/McGee, Mason, McKinney, Montpelier, Parsons, Pike, Shelby, Vernon, Watson/Watt, Williams/Williamson.

In my 1983 Mysterious America, I wrote:

Cryptologic or coincidence? Jim Brandon should be credited with calling attention to the name Watts/Watkins/Watson, and its entanglement with inexplicable things. Some other names involved in mysterious events pinpointed by Brandon are Bell, Mason, Parsons, Pike, Vernon, and Warren. The influence of such names as Mason, Pike, Warren, and Lafayette, for example, issues, in some cryptopolitical and occult way, from their ties to the Masonic tradition.

Naval Air Station Pensacola or NAS Pensacola, "The Cradle of Naval Aviation," is a United States Navy base located next to Warrington, Florida, a community southwest of the Pensacola city limits. It is the home of the Blue Angels. Above is the logo of the Commander of the Navy Region Southeast (note trident), and the new Naval Education and Training Command (NETC) Logo (released in 2012).

One of the Blue Angels.

Forts and batteries near the Pensacola Navy Yard on 27 May 1861.

The first lighthouse built by the U.S. on the Florida coast, at Pensacola. It was originally a lightship, the Aurora Borealis. The first Pensacola Light was the lightship Aurora Borealis. It was moved to Pensacola in 1823 from its previous post at the mouth of the Mississippi River after a lighthouse had been completed there. Because of frequent rough seas, the lightship had to be anchored inside the bay entrance, behind Santa Rosa Island, and could not reliably be seen from ships outside the bay. In 1825 a 40-foot (12 m) tower was built on a 40-foot (12 m) bluff at the south entrance to Pensacola Bay.

In 1825, the US designated this area for the Pensacola Navy Yard and Congress appropriated $6,000 for a lighthouse. Operational that year, it "is said to be haunted by a light keeper murdered by his wife." [Source: Shettle, Jr., M. L., "United States Naval Air Stations of World War II, Volume I: Eastern States, Schaertel Publishing Co., Bowersville, Georgia, 1995, LCCN 94--68879, ISBN 0-9643388-0-7, p. 178.]

A display in the Pensacola Lighthouse.

SyFy's "Ghost Hunters" have been to the lighthouse a few times, and smaller ghost hunting groups have visited the historic district. The Pensacola Lighthouse and Maritime Museum conduct "ghost hunts" there. It has been called "One of America's Most Haunted Lighthouses."

There is also a story of Quarters A being haunted by Marine Captain Guy Hall, Avaitor #3751, who died in a training mission in the 1920s.

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On 20 February 1939, a squadron of twelve U.S. Navy aircraft, described as "fast combat ships", were returning to NAS Pensacola, Florida, from a routine training trip and found the Gulf Coast socked in by a fog described as one of the heaviest ever witnessed in the region. Eight planes were lost with two pilots killed. Three aircraft piloted by instructors, and one other plane, were diverted by radio and outran the fogbank to land safely at Atmore and Greenville, Alabama.

Hudson Falls Clown Sightings

They're back. Yes, the Clowns.

There has been increased media attention to reports of human criminal clown activity.

Two men wearing clown masks held up a Queens, New York, Walgreen's at gunpoint on May 22, 2018.

Then at the Little Caesars pizza shop in Holly Hill, Florida, around 11:50 pm on May 26, 2018, a "clown" attacked an employee closing up the store. The "clown" used a wooden post. The employee pulled out his concealed weapon and shot the attacker dead.

Now, sightings of a Phantom Clown described variously with a "clown mask," and/or with  "red hair and red pants," near the Hudson Falls Primary School, occurred on May 29, 2018. 

Hudson Falls Primary School, 46 Vaughn Road, Hudson Falls, New York

(See "Phantom Clowns: Classified," for the definition and differences between Phantom Clowns, Killer Clowns, and Stalking Clowns.)

The Post-Star (Glens Falls, NY) 5-31-18, pg. 3, notes, "Police looking into 'clown' sighting near Kingsbury school."

Meanwhile, in Rhode Island, even one bizarre death has been laid to a musician "clowning around." 

The clowns are back, indeed.

Update:

Tim Binnall chimes in with his June 4, 2018, insights, reconfirming the notion, "Are Creepy Clowns Coming Back?" at Coast to Coast AM. 

Then on June 14, 2018, I was asked to be a guest on Slate's Decoder Ring podcast to talk about "Phantom Clowns." It is clear that the media attention is increasing regarding Clown reports in 2018.

Willa Paskin was the host, and Benjamin Frisch was the producer. I'll post the link when they are ready.

h/t to Paul Bartholomew for the news clipping.

Clown Killed at Little Caesars

Clowns. Clown masks. Clown masks. And more clown masks.

Two men wearing clown masks held up a Queens pharmacy at gunpoint on May 22, 2018. This caused a Twitter user to post this tweet:

Then it was only four days until the next evil clown story.

Heriberto Feliciano, 28, was closing up the Little Caesars pizza shop in Holly Hill, Florida, around 11:50 pm on Saturday, May 26, 2018. A "clown" was waiting for him at the side door and attacked him with a wooden post. When the post broke, the masked man pushed Feliciano to the ground and tried to stab him with scissors. Feliciano retrieved a concealed firearm and fired four to five shots at close range. The masked man died at the hospital. Source.

The Holly Hill Police Department released the photograph of the mask (at top) worn by the individual who attacked the Little Caesars employee.

4/20: New Florida School Shooting

Forest High School

Friday, August 20, 2018 is the 19th anniversary of the school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. It is also a day for a national walkout against school violence, suggested by a student impacted by the Parkland high school shooting.

At least one person was injured in a shooting at a Florida high school Friday and a suspect was in custody, police said. Police have asked the public to stay away from the school.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office said the incident occurred at Forest High School in Ocala, Fla. A student shot another student in the ankle Friday morning. 

Forest High School is located at 5000 SE Maricamp Road, Ocala, Florida 34480. The school's colors are green and gold and the school mascot is the Wildcat. As of 2014, it had an enrollment of some 2,058.

(More details will be added, as they are revealed.)

April 20 is well-known as a date of some infamy.

Fire Destroys 25 Parkland Buses

Parkland School District classes are canceled Friday, February 23, 2018, after a fire broke out overnight and destroyed approximately 25 buses at a bus garage on Stadium Road, in South Whitehall Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania.

Lehigh County is located in southeastern Pennsylvania.

It will be recalled the school shooting of February 14, 2018, occurred at the Stoneman Douglas High School. (See "Parkland Syncs.")

In Pennsylvania, firefighters were dispatched to Stadium Drive behind Orefield Middle School just after 3 a.m., said Tri-Clover fire company Chief Jeff Johnson.

North Whitehall resident Chrissi Kent, who lives on Route 309 by the Kernsville intersection, told The Morning Call she heard “popping” from the scene for at least 45 minutes.

Parkland High School is a public high school located in Meyersville, Pennsylvania, approximately 5 miles northwest of downtown Allentown. The school serves students in grades 9-12 and is the only high school for the Parkland School District.

Parkland High School was formed in 1949 when North Whitehall Township and South Whitehall Township merged to create Parkland Union School District, with Upper Macungie Township joining in 1950. Its predecessor, South Whitehall High School, was housed in the current-day Troxell Building. Parkland used the same facility until a larger building on Route 309 in Orefield was completed in 1954, which served as the high school for 45 years. In 1999, the new and current Parkland High School building on Cedar Crest Boulevard in Allentown was opened due to overcapacity of the second building. The old school was renovated and renamed Orefield Middle School (near the site of the fire), replacing Troxell Junior High School. When viewed from above, the layout of the current building and grounds closely approximate the shape of the Millennium Falcon, a spacecraft featured in the Star Wars films. School officials claim that the design was not deliberate.

The Morning Call video.

h/t S.L.

Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting: Updated

There has been a Valentine's Day school shooting on February 14, 2018.

10th Anniversary

This latest school shooting occurred on the 10th anniversary of the Northern Illinois University shooting, which was a school shooting that took place on February 14, 2008, at Cole Hall, Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. Steven Kazmierczak opened fire with a shotgun and three pistols in a crowd of students on campus, killing five students and injuring an additional 17 people, before fatally shooting himself. (See also, 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

On February 14, 2018, at approximately 2:20 p.m. EST, a shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. There is a report that the shooting occurred concurrently or soon after a fire drill. At least 20 people were reportedly injured, with fatalities. Some of these include teachers, apparently.

By the end of the day, seventeen students and teachers were said to have died in the attack.

The shooter has been arrested. His name was first reported to be Nicolas Cruz, 19, a former student at the Parkland high school. He was a member of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps. He was said to have watched YouTube videos yesterday on how to make a bomb.

Late on Wednesday, the correct name was said to be Nikolas de Jesus Cruz.

Nicholas/Nicolas/Nick Name Game

Jim Brandon, author of Weird America (1978) and The Rebirth of Pan (1983), emailed me on April 10, 2012 (source),

I wanted to add a couple of candidates to the Names of Power list – which I’ve probably mentioned before: that would be Nicholas and permutations (from Old Nick and Santa Claus up), and U.S. presidential names.

Nicholas does have some interesting connections:

Nicholas = English and Dutch: from the personal name (Greek Nikolaos, from nikān "to conquer" + laos "people"). Forms with -ch- are due to hypercorrection. The name in various vernacular forms was popular among Christians throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, largely as a result of the fame of a 4th-century Lycian bishop, about whom a large number of legends grew up, and who was venerated in the Orthodox Church as well as the Catholic. In English-speaking countries, this surname is also found as an Americanized form of various Greek surnames such as Papanikolaou "(son of) Nicholasthe priest" and patronymics such as Nikolopoulos.

For years, Brandon has noted the Nicholas/Nicolas/Nick name game. For example, in 2012, he wrote:

I suppose y’all noticed that the successful walk over Niagara Falls brought a hot name-of-power into play, in this case Nervous Nick, which seems to be running a close second to Fateful Fay these days.

Cruz is a surname of Iberian origin, first found in Castile, Spain, but later spread throughout the territories of the former Spanish and Portuguese Empires. In Spanish and Portuguese, the word cruz means "cross," either the Christian cross or the figure of transecting lines or ways.

Jesus is the English form of Ιησους (Iesous), which was the Greek form of the Aramaic name יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshu'a). Yeshu'a is itself a contracted form of Yehoshu'a. Yeshua ben Yoseph, better known as Jesus Christ, was the central figure of the New Testament and the source of the Christian religion. The four gospels state that he was the son of God and the Virgin Mary who fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. He preached for three years before being crucified in Jerusalem.

The School

The school day at Stoneman Douglas High School ends a 2:40 p.m., according to the school's website. The first tweet from the Broward Sheriff's Office about reports of the shooting came at 2:53 p.m. ET.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was named after the Everglades environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas. The school opened in 1990 with students in grades 9 though 11, most of whom transferred from nearby schools Coral Springs High School and J. P. Taravella High School. The first senior class graduated in 1992.

About 2,000 students are enrolled at Stoneman Douglas High School.

Parkland is a city in Broward County, Florida, United States, where zoning laws are designed to protect the "park-like" character of the city. Initially, there were no stores or traffic lights in Parkland, though this began to change in the mid 1990s and early 2000s with the additions of large neighborhood developments like Heron Bay and Parkland Isles. As of the 2010 census, the population of Parkland was 23,962. Parkland is a principal city of the Miami metropolitan area, which was home to an estimated 6,012,331 people in 2015.

Killer Clowns: 2017 Half Year Report

A frequently heard question, after last year's massive number of sightings and reports of Phantom Clowns and other forms of creepy clowns, is: What happened to all the Clown encounters?

As I noted late in 2016, after Donald Trump's election shortly after Halloween, the media's attention shifted to Trump and that melodrama. That sucked the life out of the clown stories that had evolved from Phantoms, to Stalkers, to Killers. 

The year of 2016 ended with the Creepy Clown jumping the Atlantic Ocean, and being reported, in a more violent mode, as Killer Clowns in the U.K.

During the first half of 2017, the few and far between clown stories are again these more violent type, the actual, real Killer Clowns.

Specific authentic "Killer Clown" news came via three incidents in the USA, all clustering in May 2017.

(1) May 17, 2017 - Glendale, Arizona - Clown With Ax

A group of children walking home from school in Arizona were terrified when they were chased by a miscreant wielding an ax and clad in a creepy clown mask.
The bizarre incident occurred earlier this week in the city of Glendale when the group of youngsters were walking back to their neighborhood.Suddenly, the boys spotted a menacing individual wearing a clown mask and holding an ax coming towards them. According to one of the kids, the ne'er-do-well yelled at them, "you better run because we are coming after you." The frightened boys heeded the clown's advice and ran away from the scene until they got home. "I thought I was going to die today," one traumatized youngster told TV station ABC 15 in Arizona. Although the boys' tale may sound like something they could have conjured up on the way home in a fit of boredom, an investigation by authorities suggests that the encounter was all too real. Cops say that they found both the clown mask and the ax seemingly left behind by the person who harassed the children. With no suspects at this time, police hope that photos of the recovered items from the crime scene may catch someone's attention and lead to a break in the case.Much like warm weather seems to usher in crop circle season every year, one wonders if the same can be said of creepy clowns. Source.

 (2) May 23, 2017 - Denver, Colorado - Killer Clown Kills With Blades

A Killer Clown at Torchy's?

Man in clown makeup with bladed gloves accused of killing man near Torchy’s Tacos.
Suspect tells cops dead man may have fallen on one of the spiked bracelets he was wearing.
Man in clown makeup with bladed gloves accused of killing man near Torchy’s Tacos.
Denver police have arrested a man who was wearing clown makeup when he allegedly stabbed and slashed a 29-year-old man to death with a glove that had blades attached to the end of each finger.
Christian Lee Gulzow, 36, allegedly attacked the victim at 12:49 a.m. Tuesday following an argument near Torchy’s Tacos at West 11th Avenue and Broadway, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
The Denver coroner’s office identified the victim as Brian Lucero, 29. The cause of death was a stab wound, according to a coroner’s office news release.
Witnesses told police that the suspect, wearing white clown makeup accented with black streaks on the face, suddenly began threatening the victim with a glove with blades that were 2- to 3-inches long. They were near the Corner Store at West 10th Avenue and Broadway.
Gulzow began pummeling the victim, who tried to dodge the blows, the police report says. The victim eventually punched the suspect, who then yelled at the victim and followed him to Torchy’s. The two were the only ones in the restaurant parking lot.
“The victim collapsed in the north east parking lot of the Torchy’s business,” the report says.
Gulzow allegedly fled on a scooter, the police report says.
Police spotted a man on a Denver Public School’s HALO camera riding a scooter matching the suspect’s appearance in the 900 block of Galapago Street.
They saw the man throw an object in the bushes. Police went to the building and found a knife in the bushes, the police report says.
Police found the man at West Alameda Avenue and Lipan Street. His clothes were covered in blood, the report says.
When interviewed at police headquarters Gulzow said a man threatened him and yelled at him “to get out of my alley.” He claimed the victim attacked him and stole his scooter, the court records say.
Gulzow said he may have hurt the victim when he tackled the victim while he was riding away on Gulzow’s scooter. The victim may have fallen on one of Gulzow’s spiked wrist bracelets, Gulzow told police. The suspect also acknowledged that he may have cut the victim while he jabbed him with his “clawed glove.”
Gulzow’s account was different from those offered by witnesses, the report says.
Gulzow’s jail nickname is Diablo. He has an extensive criminal history with multiple domestic violence, assault and weapons convictions. In 2012, he was convicted of felony menacing with a deadly weapon, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records. Source.

(3) May 23, 2017 - Miami, Florida - Clown With A Gun

A man with green hair and “Joker” tattoos on his face was arrested for pointing a loaded gun at drivers in the Miami area.
Miami-Dade police arrested 29-year-old Lawrence Sullivan on Tuesday, WSVN reported.
Sullivan has “Joker” written across half his forehead and “F*** Batman” on the other half.
According to the Miami Herald, Sullivan had a loaded Smith & Wesson handgun with six live rounds in his pocket when officers confronted him.
Sullivan lives with his mother and listed his occupation as “tattoo model,” the paper reported.
Sullivan was charged with carrying a concealed firearm. On Wednesday, his bond was set at $5,000. Source.

Part two of the year may have ripples from IT the movie being released into theaters on September 8, 2017.

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As a footnote for 2017, if should be mentioned that political clown, Trump advisor Robert J. Stone Jr., attempted to resurrect his career as The Joker in June.