Twilight Language: Media

Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Killer Clown Returns

On Tuesday, April 10, 2018, I pre-recorded a Conspirinormal program interview, first about my new Mothman book, and then doing a segment on Phantom Clowns.

Then on Wednesday, April 11, 2018, there was a Beverly Hills, California incident involving a clown, kids, and a machete!

NBC Los Angeles, on April 11, 2018, at 10:19 pm PDT, updated their story:

A man in a clown mask spooked a Beverly Hills neighborhood Wednesday when he reportedly wielded a machete at children.
Beverly Hills police have been patrolling the 1700 block of Carla Ridge in search of the man since at least 10:30 p.m.

Meanwhile, on Monday, April 9, 2018, WPRI in Warwick, Rhode Island, reported:

Clown-masked robber targets local Dunkin' Donuts

Warwick Police are searching for a masked suspect who they said robbed a Warwick Avenue Dunkin' Donuts Monday night.
Officers were called to the scene around 9:30 p.m.
Police said the suspect left with an undisclosed amount of cash, dropping his mask on the sidewalk as he fled the scene. It is not known if he was armed at the time of the robbery.
According to Warwick Police, the man was wearing a black leather jacket, dark pants, and gloves.

h/t Christopher Farnsworth, Adam Sayne, and others.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Phantom Clowns: All News Is Local

The International Cryptozoology Museum has a current exhibit on the differences between Phantom Clowns (coined by me in 1981) & Stalking Clowns.

"All news is local."

The Creepy Clown Epidemic is global. But all stories begin locally, and even national stories are written to reflect the local angle, as the old adage conveys.

Coverage can be national and local. What happens when even your hometown newspaper - in this case from the same publisher whose papers I delivered as a paperboy to over a hundred homes in the 1960s - catches up with the phenomenon?

DECATUR – Coulrophobia – a morbid fear of clowns – is spreading across the nation like a flu outbreak, and its symptoms are infecting people in Central Illinois.
Decatur police have received several calls from Facebook users worried about threatening messages that pop up, accompanied by pictures of clowns. These have turned out to be hoaxes but they are part of a coast-to-coast pattern of scary clown sightings and reports of clowns frightening people, most proving false but some real, that are intensifying as Halloween approaches.
“Social media causes stuff like this to just blow up and get way out of proportion,” said police Sgt. Chris Copeland. “I even heard that somewhere down in the south part of the country, and this might be another rumor floating around Facebook, someone actually got shot while wearing a clown suit.”
Copeland said people have a legal right to dress as whomever, or whatever, they want for Halloween. But he urges caution on where you wear a clown suit and how you behave, and says this might be a very good year to make another costume choice.
And he also has a word of warning for coulrophobia sufferers: don't overreact. Copeland has seen aggressive messages on Facebook targeting clowns and threatening to wipe the smile off their faces with violence.
“I would also like to caution anyone thinking that, just because someone is wearing a clown suit, that gives reasonable cause to shoot them or kill them,” added Copeland. “That is not the case.”
Nationwide news reports on the scary clown phenomena have quoted instances of schools being locked down on reports of clowns wandering the campus. Rolling Stone magazine featured an interview with author Loren Coleman, a Decatur native, who wrote about something he called “Phantom Clown Theory” in his 1981 [sic ~ the coining was in 1981, the book was published in 1983] Mysterious America.
Coleman is quoted as saying stories about clowns trying to lure children have persisted for years and can warp into a mass hysteria.
Professional clowns, meanwhile, are feeling the pain: both in their wallets as bookings get canceled and in fear for their own safety. One group met in Tucson, Ariz., recently to stage a costumed protest march called “Clown Lives Matter.” A flier for the event said: “The march is a peaceful way to show clowns are not psycho killers ... Come out, bring the family, meet a clown and get a hug!”
Decatur Police Chief Jim Getz, watching the clown scare roll across the internet, said he's not seen anything like this before. “As good as the social media can be for some things, it can be just as detrimental in other ways,” he said.
Source:
Clowning around isn't so funny now by Tony Reid, Herald & Review, Decatur, Illinois, October 11, 2016.

Rolling Stone has mentioned me, at least twice, in their recent clown articles:

"'Killer Clowns': Inside the Terrifying Hoax Sweeping America: Clowns have been spotted lurking in woods from South Carolina to upstate New York," By Suzanne Zuppello, September 29, 2016.

The Phantom Clowns, as they were dubbed by cryptozoologist Loren Coleman given their allusive nature, spread to Kansas City, Denver, Omaha, and Pennsylvania. Since the 1980s, clowns have made appearances across the country, usually in the weeks and months leading up to Halloween.

Coleman's phantom clown theory is rooted in the "primal dread that so many children experience in their presence."

"'Killer Clowns' Now Targets of Violence: Clown sightings began as an amusing phenomenon, but have become increasingly dangerous – mostly to the clowns themselves," By Suzanne Zuppello, October 10, 2016.

In his 1981 [sic ~ 1983] book Mysterious America, cryptozoologist Loren Coleman coined the phrase "Phantom Clown Theory," which refers to the way a few sightings of clowns 'luring' children into vans, cars and forests can turn into mass hysteria – even though no clowns are ever actually caught. He says that, though this phenomenon has existed for over 30 years, the recent spate has become worse because of social media.

"The initial sightings were classic Phantom Clowns," Colman tells Rolling Stone, referring to the early reports in South Carolina. "Then, this was then diluted by 'Stalking Clowns': real people dressing up to scare, be seen and be photographed." There is a real danger here – just not where one might expect. "Place this 'Clown Sightings' flap in the middle of an extremely violent year, with so many guns available, and you are going to have potentially dangerous events occurring," he says. "Not for the 'Phantom Clowns' but for the human 'Stalking Clowns' who will be the targets of angry, scared citizens."

Coleman's prediction is becoming reality. Last week, students at both Pennsylvania State University and Nashville's Belmont University announced campus-wide search parties for clowns after sightings were reported on both campuses. But an amusing evening turned potentially grim as students armed themselves with bats during the march. One student leader "underestimated the power of hysteria" that their marches against clowns would stir up. While those searches luckily stayed peaceful, videos from elsewhere, under the tag #ClownLivesMatter, show people encountering clowns, who appear non-threatening aside from their creepy ensemble, and beating them up. One video even shows a clown being beaten senseless with a baseball bat.

Other recent interviews and mentions of my past research include:

"How a Maine-based Bigfoot expert found himself at the center of the national clown frenzy," by Dugan Arnett, Boston Globe, October 7, 2016.

The article is an extensive overview of a long interview with me, as well as containing a quote from a key member of the Museum's staff.

As assistant museum director Jeff Meuse puts it, “It’s been quite a frenzy with him trying to make sure that everyone gets a little piece of Loren Coleman.”

Please see entire article.

"Creepy clown trend dates back to ’80s, but this time it’s different," by Dean Balsamini and Melkorka Licea, New York Post, October 9, 2016.

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman (Photo credit: Jenny Coleman)

But while the clown craze is disturbing, it’s mostly harmless and nothing new, says cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, an “investigator of human and animal mysteries” and author of 35 books.
He traced the phenomenon to Massachusetts in 1981, when children reported evil clowns attempting to lure them into vans.
The clowns were never seen by adults.
“There were no arrests, no photographs, no evidence and no abductions,” Coleman told The Post.
Soon after, the “phantom clowns,” as Coleman calls them, turned up in Providence, RI, Kansas City, Mo., Omaha, Neb., Denver, and Pittsburgh.
At the time, Coleman was working as director of the Charlestown office of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services. He wrote to 400 “fellow researchers and writers,” wondering if they had heard of the “unexplained phenomenon.”
The feedback revealed there had been similar reports in local papers. “That was the mystery. How do people in different parts of the country have the same experience? There was no internet or wire stories or national stories about this phenomenon,” said Coleman, who wrote about the sightings in his book Mysterious America.
To this day, the 1981 “phantom clowns” remain a “total mystery.”
“There are long stretches where nothing happens,” Coleman said, noting minor sightings from Phoenix in 1985, and South Orange and Belleville, NJ, in 1991.

There have been other examples. If I thought the 1981 wave of Phantom Clown sightings were widespread, nothing could have prepared me for 2016's spread of both Phantom Clowns and Stalking Clowns events.

Channel WCSH6/NBC TV's Katie Bavoso reports live from the Phantom Clown exhibit at the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

Thursday, September 08, 2016

Phantom Clowns: The Politics of Trump

In exactly a year, on September 8, 2017, the reboot of It, with a new Pennywise, opens in theaters. Andrés Muschietti's new film is horrific, hints the advance leaks about it, with the scary clown terrorizing children in a "small town in Maine."

After the 2016 wave of real life sightings of clowns in the Carolinas and Ohio, reporters are searching around for the "why" behind the recent encounters. Rob Zombie's forthcoming movie about five carnival workers kidnapped by a gang of sadistic clowns, 31, in theaters September 16, 2016, is being blamed, without a thread of evidence linking the two.

Muschietti's It is being mentioned too.

But neither motion pictures's publicity people appear to be behind any kind of viral marketing involving clowns luring kids into the woods. Studios would have to be stupid to involve themselves in that sort of horror.

The media, nevertheless, are beginning to do deep background pieces on the "reasons" behind the current incidents of clown reports.

I was called for an interview yesterday by a journalist from Atlas Obscura, because, of course, I first investigated and documented the 1981 national flap. And coined the phrase "Phantom Clowns."

Soon after my noontime conversation, the story was published with this headline: "This Cryptozoologist Thinks Trump Might Be Behind the Carolinas Clown Hysteria."

Whoa.

The reporter had messaged me this:

Needless to say, I was quite surprised by the headline, and told the reporter so.

I had not "blamed" Trump for the Phantom Clown sightings, but pointed out that in election years, the media get tired of the same old storylines.

The press looks for distractions, I noted. Besides, the New York City tabloids had labeled Donald Trump a "clown" - in more ways than one - and that was an intriguing coincidence.

Within minutes, the story reappeared with this new headline:

Headlines are different than the content of an article.

The current incidents are causing a reflective look back. I did thank the reporter Cara Giaimo for her research into the archival incidents.

Giaimo also shared my interest in the political angle and the humor of the following memes. Her article was posted with Trump asking the child in the It meme about a certain campaign promise he had made.

The image is frightening but funny, in the context of social media sharing.

The politics of clowns and the election may be interrelated, but not in any way we yet understand.

Facebook comment:

The first Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump debate scheduled for September 26, 2016, 41 years after The Rocky Horror Picture Show premieres in the USA, Los Angeles, 1975. Tim Curry plays Dr. Frank N. Furter, as he did on stage. Tim Curry also plays the first Pennywise in the TV miniseries It, and will be 71 years & 142 days old on September 8, 2017, the scheduled release of the It reboot. So, Curry will be 71 years & 71+71 days old. I'll spare the other numerology, but it's interesting, the transexual themes bombarding the conditioning media, on September 26 there are 96 days left in the year, 96=freemason. ~ Ronald Christopher Walker

The Phantom Clowns are not through with us. That's for certain.

Saturday, April 09, 2016

The Red Danger Zone of April 2016

We are heading into a time of the year full of peril.

(Above) The man who drove his car into a crowded Dutch royal parade, attempting to assassinate Queen Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard, on April 30, 2009, had shaved his hair into a Mohawk, like the homicidal anti-hero of the highly political film Taxi Driver (1976).

The explosive American political climate of 2015-2016 has produced wall-to-wall media coverage of the infighting on the Republican and Democratic fronts. Due to the almost nonstop attention to the conflicts between the candidates, have you noticed the mainstream news channels (e.g. CNN, Fox News, MSNBC) have mostly ignored school shootings and workplace violence? Have the lack of coverage actually caused a decline in the incidents? Or are they happening but not being reinforced? Certainly, the terrorist incidents in San Bernardino, Paris and Brussels resulted in a few days of reportage, but then the media returned to politics.

Watch for that to change during the last two weeks of April 2016.

Predictive programming consciousness, copycat effect studies, twilight language analysis, and just plain common sense should tell even the most unaware investigators and reporters that the month of April is perilous. The fourth month of the year, the second month of spring in the northern hemisphere, has become a minefield of anniversaries and remembrances of things which have gone tragically wrong. Homicidal, suicidal, vulnerable, and impulsive violent individuals will react strongly to this upcoming "red zone" of anniversaries. Expect the worst, hope for the best. The pressure has been building.

The dates may be remarkably covert in the unfolding of the incidents, but they are there as the stimuli for more events.

Take for example, what occurred this week, on Wednesday, April 6, 2016. At the middle school in Newton, Connecticut, a middle school teacher, Jason M. Adams, 46, was detained because he brought a concealed firearm to school. Adams, 46, was released without posting bond and was scheduled to appear in Danbury Superior Court on the 2nd week anniversary of his "weapon's oversight," on April 20, 2016.

Of all the school systems in the country, the Newton/Sandy Hook group may be one of the most sensitive about such "mistakes." On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza, 20, entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, killing 20 first-grade students, six adults, and himself.

Adam Peter Lanza, briefly a student at Sandy Hook Elementary, was born on April 22, 1992, in Kingston, New Hampshire. April 22nd is a hidden anniversary even within the Newtown-Sandy Hook story.

This year, 2016, the Boston Marathon will be run on Monday, April 18, 2016, which is Patriots' Day in Massachusetts, Patriot's Day in Maine, and a school vacation day in Wisconsin.

For 2016, April 18th begins the intensive "Red Danger Zone" on the April calendar that I have warned about for several years. The violence has begun to spread to nearby dates.

Let me walk you through some of the events tied to these dates.

April 14-5

1865 – On the eve of the fifth day of Passover, April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot and died of his wounds in the early morning of April 15th, which had already been scheduled as a national day of prayer to mark the end of the Civil War. Jews across the land were gathering in synagogues to give thanks. When news of Lincoln's death arrived, the synagogue altars were quickly draped in black and, instead of Passover melodies, the congregations chanted Yom Kippur hymns. Lincoln had been protective of American Jewry, overturning General Grant's infamous General Order #11 expelling Jews from the Department of the Tennessee and supporting legislation allowing Jewish chaplains to serve in the military.

April 15

2013 – The Boston Marathon bombing was a terrorist attack, followed by subsequent related shootings, that occurred when two pressure cooker bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon on Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts. Six died in the events, and 280 injured, some with loss of legs and arms.

April 16
73 – Masada, a Jewish fortress, falls to the Romans after several months of siege, ending the Great Jewish Revolt.
1947 – French freighter S.S. Grandcamp explosion loaded with ammonium nitrate docked at the Port of Texas City, Texas, and erupted in flames, causing a massive explosion that killed at least 581 people.
1995 – George W. Bush names April 16 as Selena Day in Texas, after she was killed two weeks earlier.

2007 – Virginia Tech shooting: Seung-Hui Cho guns down 32 people and injures 17 before dying by suicide.

April 17

1961 – Bay of Pigs Invasion: A group of Cuban exiles financed and trained by the CIA lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.
1978 – Mir Akbar Khyber is assassinated, provoking a communist coup d'état in Afghanistan.
1984 – Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher is killed by gunfire from the Libyan People's Bureau (Embassy) in London during a small demonstration outside the embassy. Ten others are wounded. The events lead to an 11-day siege of the building.
2006 – A Palestinian suicide bomber detonates an explosive device in Tel Aviv, killing 11 people and injuring 70.

April 18

1775 – American Revolution: The British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere, William Dawes (above) and other riders warn the countryside of the troop movements. (The syncinematic film, 2009's Knowing has student Caleb Koestler - a name game there - going to the fictional William Dawes Elementary, located in 1959 Lexington.)
1906 – An earthquake and fire destroy much of San Francisco, California.
1983 – A suicide bomber destroys the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people.
2007 – A series of bombings, two of them being suicides, occur in Baghdad, killing 198 and injuring 251.
2013 – A suicide bombing in a Baghdad cafe kills 27 people and injures another 65.
2013 – Fertilizer plant explosion, West, just north of Waco, Texas, killed 15 killed and about 200 injured. Eighty homes and a middle school are leveled.

April 19

Blood Sacrifice to the Beast. Fire sacrifice is required for this specific date.
1775 – Battles of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. This is the actual anniversary of the battles, even though the observance has become a date tied to the third Monday in April.
1897 – First running of the Boston Marathon, with marathons named after the Greek Battle of Marathon.

1993 – The 51-day FBI siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
1993 – South Dakota governor George Mickelson and seven others are killed when a state-owned aircraft crashes in Iowa.
1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA, is bombed, killing 168.
1995 – Richard Wayne Snell, a convicted murderer, member of the white supremacist group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA), is executed in Arkansas. Snell was involved in filming the planes that landed at the restricted airport in Mena, Arkansas, believed by many conspiracy theorists to be used in a CIA-sanctioned cover-up to smuggle drugs into America. Snell had been accused of plotting to bomb the Murrah Building in the 1980s. Snell reportedly watched televised reports of the Oklahoma City bombing on the day of his execution and nodded in approval.

2013 – Boston Marathon bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is killed in a shootout with police. His brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is captured while hiding in a boat inside a backyard in Watertown, Massachusetts.

April 20

1889 – Adolf Hitler, Austrian-German soldier and politician, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1945) is born
1939 – Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany.
1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler makes his last trip to the surface to award Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth.
1961 – Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba.
1971 – According to Steven Hager, editor of High Times, he found the term 420 originated at San Rafael High School in 1971, among the Waldos. They would meet every day after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke marijuana at the Louis Pasteur statue. One of the Waldos notes, "We did discover we could talk about getting high in front of our parents without them knowing by using the phrase 420." By extension now, April 20 ("4/20" in U.S. dating shorthand) has evolved into a counterculture holiday, where people gather to celebrate and consume cannabis.
1978 – Korean Air Lines Flight 902 is shot down by the Soviet Union.

1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, killed 13 people and injured 21 others before dying by suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.
2007 – Johnson Space Center shooting: William Phillips with a handgun barricades himself in NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself.

2015 – A substitute teacher was killed at the Joan Fuster School in the La Sager neighborhood of Barcelona, Spain, by a 13-year-old student with a crossbow and machete. Four other people were injured.

April 21
1506 – The three-day Lisbon Massacre comes to an end with the slaughter of over 1,900 suspected Jews by Portuguese Catholics.
1985 – The compound of the militant group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord surrenders to federal authorities in Arkansas after a two-day government siege.

April 22
2004 – Two fuel trains collide in Ryongchon, North Korea, killing up to 150 people.
2013 – Six people die in a shooting in Belgorod, Russia.
2013 – The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrest and charge two men with plotting to disrupt a Toronto area train service in a plot claimed to be backed by Al-Qaeda elements.
2014 – More than 60 people are killed and 80 are seriously injured in a train crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Katanga Province.
2016 – The one-month anniversary of three suicide bombers killing 35 people and injuring 316 in the 2016 Brussels bombings at the airport and at the Maelbeek/Maalbeek metro station.

April 23
303 – Saint George, Roman soldier and martyr (b. 275) dies
St George's Day (England) and its related observances
1343 – St. George's Night Uprising commences in the Duchy of Estonia.
1968 – Timothy James McVeigh, who blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Building in 1995, on April 19, was born. He is executed on June 11, 2001.

April 24
1184 BC – Traditional date of the fall of Troy.

April 25
1946 – Naperville train disaster kills 47 in Naperville, Illinois.

1965 – Teenage sniper Michael Andrew Clark kills three and wounds six others shooting from a hilltop along Highway 101 just south of Santa Maria, California.
2005 – One hundred seven people die in Amagasaki rail crash in Japan.
2010 – Joseph McVey, 23, from Ohio, is arrested with a shotgun, in a car made to look like a police vehicle with working lights and sirens in the Asheville, NC airport parking lot, when President Obama and his family were departing in Air Force One.

April 26
1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, in Virginia.
1894 – Birthdate of Rudolf Walter Richard Heß, also spelled Hess, who was a prominent politician in Nazi Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, he served in this position until 1941, when he flew solo to Scotland. Neo-nazi "celebrations" have been held for him in Germany, on the date of his death, August 17, but some indications are that his birthdate is acknowledged, as well.
1982 – Fifty-seven people are killed by former police officer Woo Bum-kon in a shooting spree in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea.
2002 – Robert Steinhäuser, 19, infiltrates the Gutenberg-Gymnasium (a secondary school) in Erfurt, Germany. He stalked the halls, and killed 12 teachers, an administrator, two students, one policeman, and wounded 10 other people before he killed himself. Seventeen people in total died.

April 27
711 – Islamic conquest of Hispania: Moorish troops led by Tariq ibn Ziyad land at Gibraltar to begin their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus).
1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines and Berbers attack the Tripolitan city of Derna (The "shores of Tripoli" part of the Marines' Hymn).
2011 – The April 25–28 tornado outbreak devastates parts of the Southeastern United States, especially the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. Two hundred five tornadoes touched down on April 27 alone, killing more than 300 and injuring hundreds more.
2012 – At least four explosions hit the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk with at least 27 people injured.
2014 – A tornado outbreak over much of the eastern United States kills 35 people.

April 28
1192 – Assassination of Conrad of Montferrat (Conrad I), King of Jerusalem, in Tyre, two days after his title to the throne is confirmed by election. The killing is carried out by Hashshashin.
1949 – The Hukbalahap are accused of assassinating former First Lady of the Philippines Aurora Quezon, while she is en route to dedicate a hospital in memory of her late husband; her daughter and ten others are also killed.
1978 – President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, is overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by pro-communist rebels.
1996 – Port Arthur massacre, Tasmania: A gunman, Martin Bryant, opens fire at the Broad Arrow Cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania, killing 35 people and wounding 23 others.

April 29
1429 – Joan of Arc (tied to name game, Fay/Fairy/Beech) arrives to relieve the Siege of Orleans.
1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. Both Hitler and Braun died by suicide the following day.

April 30
1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun die by suicide after being married for less than 40 hours. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building.

2009 – Eight people are killed and another ten injured at a Queen's Day parade in Netherlands in an attempted assassination on Queen Beatrix and members of the Royal Family. The attack occurred at the De Naald (in English The Needle), which is the obelisk monument in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn. The car of the assailant, identified as Richard Karst Tates, ended up crashed at the base of the obelisk.

2009 – Azerbaijan State Oil Academy shooting: Twelve people were killed (students and staff members) by an armed attacker.

Beltaine Festival - April 30-May 1. Walpurgis Night. This is the highest day on the Druidic Witch's Calendar. May 1 is the Illuminati's second most sacred holiday. Human sacrifice is required.

+++++++++++++++++

Bridget Brown of Toronto's Canadian TV online edition wrote the following on October 4, 2006:

Coleman says violent offenders, intent on shocking the public, sometimes "compete for the highest body count."...the copycat crimes will likely slow down as we near winter. He says spring, and the anniversary of Columbine, could be enough to spark another cycle of tragedy.

Here's a snippet from Montana's Daily Inter Lake, for October 5, 2006:

There is also the influence of cable news to be accounted for, as wall-to-wall coverage of shootings and murder could easily sway sick minds to think of killers as culture heroes. Indeed, researcher Loren Coleman believes copycats imitate previous violent attacks on a regular basis. He says school attacks follow a pattern after a media event in a day, a week, two weeks, a month, a year, or 10 years. "Vulnerable humans have internal media clocks," he maintains.

"Killers often pick special dates for their attack," April 17, 2009 by Trish Crawford, in Toronto Star

...Loren Coleman is worried, because mass killers often choose special dates and anniversaries for their carnage. The killers at Columbine did, by picking the birthday of one of history's monsters.
The author of The Copycat Effect (Simon & Schuster) says the amount of attention this anniversary gets may determine whether any other disaffected males bent on vengeance pick April 20 for their act of destruction.
"Anniversaries can be dangerous," Coleman says. "These individuals compete with each other."
...Coleman called schools "a fish bowl setting with a vulnerable population."
...The killers are uniformly "homicidal, suicidal, sexually dysfunctional males" who feel powerless and blame others for their problems. Attacking school students – young girls are favored targets – makes these people feel powerful and strong, Coleman says.

Michael Hoffman III, being interviewed for "Cereal Murder and the Group Mind" in 2000, notes:

There is an occult nose-thumbing at the bottom of many of these twilight language cereal murders, such as Jack the Ripper - poking fun at the investigators and the public because so many don't get the black comedy at the heart of it. It's a feeling of superiority magnified exponentially.

+++

H/T to R. Sullivan for news of the new Newtown incident.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Tabloid Prez 2016

The tabloids seem to be competing with each other for most comedic but biting politically-related headlines during this presidential cycle. Whereas the traditional definition of tabloid journalism is of a style of journalism that tends to emphasize topics such as sensational crime stories, astrology, ufology, celebrity gossip, sports scandals, and junk food news, the current media have loved mostly the Trump, as their source. The following examples reflect what political news has become during the race for the White House for 2016.