Murder Live on Facebook

Today is the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting that resulted in 33 dead (32 students & staff, plus one shooter who died by suicide). The attacks received international media coverage. It was one of the first instances of the gunman directly involving the media with a mailing. On April 18, NBC aired the videotape and some pictures that it received from the killer, Seung-Hui Cho, that afternoon. The package, which NBC's Brian Williams called a "multimedia manifesto," was mailed between the two shooting episodes and was received at NBC's New York headquarters that afternoon, and they reported the package to the FBI.

In a ripple from a decade ago, this Easter Sunday April 16, 2017, was shaken by the live broadcast on Facebook of a Cleveland, Ohio, murder.

The name of the suspect is Steve Stephens, known as "Stevie Steve" on social media. He says he's flipped and created an "Easter Day Slaughter," although only one victim has been found and identified. He also claims he is going to randomly shoot “Greeks” in the head until he gets caught. Stephens said on his Facebook page he was a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

Stephen is from the Greek name Στεφανος (Stephanos) meaning "crown," more precisely "that which surrounds." Saint Stephen was a deacon who was stoned to death, as told in Acts in the New Testament. He is regarded as the first Christian martyr. Due to him, the name became common in the Christian world.

The name of the one known victim is named Robert Godwin, 74.

The meaning of the name Godwin [Goodwin (English)] is originally from the Middle English personal name Godewyn, Old English Godwine, composed of the elements god "good" + wine "friend."

The suspect Steve Stephens broadcast the killing on Facebook Live around 2 p.m. ET, and has claimed to have committed multiple other homicides which are yet to be verified. The shooting happened at 635 East 93rd Street.

In the video, which has been removed from Facebook, the suspect pulls up to an elderly man who is walking on the side of the road. He tells the man to say a woman’s name and pulls out his gun. The elderly man repeatedly tells the suspect he doesn’t know the woman, but the suspect pulls the trigger, shooting the man in the head, leaving him bloodied in the street.

The suspect walks away and says the elderly man is dead because of the woman. The woman's name, Joy Lane, means, literally, "path to happiness."

Steve Stephens also blamed casinos, specifically the Jack Casino in Cleveland.

Authorities identified the suspect as Steve Stephens (above, pictured here on Easter), a 6-foot, 1-inch tall African American male with a full beard. He weighs 244 lbs. The suspect is believed to be wearing a dark blue and grey or black striped polo shirt. 

In a posted Facebook video, Stephens says that he is a case manager at Beech Brook (pictured above), a children’s behavioral health agency that is based in northeast Ohio. It is a facility that employs behavior modification techniques.

“For 165 years, Beech Brook has been serving Northeast Ohio’s most vulnerable children. Today, as a leading behavioral health agency, Beech Brook will serve more than 18,000 children and families this year,” the facility’s website says. “Beech Brook touches the lives of children, teens and families through an array of services ranging from prevention, education and early intervention to community-based programming to strengthen and support youth and families.”

In one of his videos, Stephens blamed his workplace for driving him to kill people.

“We are shocked and horrified like everyone else,” said Nancy Kortemeyer, a spokeswoman for Beech Brook said in a statement. “To think that one of our employees could do this is awful. … We don’t know anything more about it. We Hope and pray that he is arrested as soon as possible and we hope and pray for a resolution quickly.”

“Steve Stephens killed an elderly gentleman. I personally give my condolences to the family of the victim,” Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson said during a press conference.

“We know who Steve Stephens is and he will be eventually caught. He need not to do anymore harm to any innocent people. Whatever concerns or problems that he’s having, we’re here to have a conversation,” the mayor said.

“We need Steve to turn himself in,” Police Chief Calvin D. Williams said. “We want this to end with as much peace as we can bring to this right now. If that doesn’t happen, we have all our partners in on this and will look until we find him.”

Williams said state, county and federal officials are helping with the capture of the suspect. As of this evening, there have been no sightings of the suspect.

Williams also said that there are no other victims and urges the public to come forward with any information. “We need to get Steve off the streets,” he said. “There’s no need for any more bloodshed.”

Police are searching for a white Ford Fusion that belongs to the suspect. They said the suspect was last seen south of Interstate-90 in the area of East 93rd.

Williams said the car was recently purchased and thinks there is a temporary tag and that the plates could have been switched.

Emergency staffers at the Cleveland Clinic is on standby for mass casualties.

Remember, this is the 10th anniversary of VA Tech, with experienced a media-involved shooting.

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The live nature of a murder online is a first, according to media commentary. But it follows closely the almost immediate taping and spread of the August 26, 2015 shooting of WDBJ camearman Adam Ward and reporter Alison Parker, at Bridgewater Plaza, Moneta, Virginia.

The first-person shooter images that issued from that 2015 incident are quite similar to the Steve Stephens "kill shot" of Mr. Goodwin.

For more on that shooting, see:

(a) Another Bridgewater, Another Day of Violence; 

(b) Bridgewater Plaza's WDBJ Shootings: Copycats & Cartoons; and

(c) Bridgewater Plaza's Batman Syncs.

Bridgewater Plaza's WDBJ Shootings: Copycats & Cartoons

It will be on Wednesday, September 9, 2015, on the day of the second anniversary of the Bridgewater Plaza shooting, when the first highest potential copycat window will occur.

In the wake of the Bridgewater Plaza shootings, which left WDBJ cameraman Adam Ward and reporter Alison Parker dead, and Vicki Gardner, the local chamber of commerce director, wounded, there has been in-depth looks at the event and the gunman, Vester Lee Flanagan II (a/k/a Bryce Williams).

Let's look at some of the copycats that built up to this incident, through the political cartoons that have appeared in years and days after similar events.

The mass shootings, in recent years, have resulted in thoughtful, insightful illustrations of the community ethos and, even, mythos surrounding the violence.

Looking back to the Aurora shootings, for example, the image of Batman is often prominent.

Aurora also caused images of theaters to appear in these cartoons, and the other theater shootings have merged with that one.

The 2015 Lafayette shooting has been added as the sequel.

VA Tech, Sandy Hook, Charleston, Bridgewater Plaza/WDBJ - the list becomes overwhelming.

Even a real newspaper cover appears to be cartoonish in this climate.

And the holding of the gun appears programmed from the past - and we find out much of the Bridgewater Plaza shooting was born in the legacy of VA Tech, Columbine, and Charleston.

The copycat effect is strong in this event, sadly. Rick McKee's 2015 post-Bridgewater Plaza cartoon captures the concept well.

And yet, it almost seems as out-of-whack as another story that McKee dealt with in cartoon form in 2008 - down to a similar plaid outfit - a Bigfoot hoax event. Recall, Vester Flanagan wore plaid for his 2015 "media killing."

Which leaves me wondering, what odd stories did Alison Parker work on at WDBJ that have been scrubbed from her archives?

(The following is not Alison Parker, but a typical local - in this case, Channel 7 in Florida - reporter doing the kind of stories they sometimes have to do.)

Columbine Copycats Continue: Teacher's Crossbow Death in Barcelona

There has been a fatal death in a school in Spain. We should not be surprised it happened today, April 20, 2015.

Someone has posted the top photo at the Joan Fuster School website. It is a screen capture from a past season of Game of Thrones, in which crossbows become important story elements, involved in various significant deaths.

A 13-year-old Spanish boy armed with a crossbow and a machete killed a substitute teacher and injured four people at his school, the Joan Fuster School in the La Sagrera neighborhood of Barcelona, Spain.

La Sagrera, according to my research associate Red Pill Junkie, is from the word sagrera, which translates as the hallowed space around consecrated chapels, inside which cellars and store rooms were built to keep wine and cereals.

Therefore, I must observe, in terms of the name game, this is a "cereal"/"serial" killing, of sorts.

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. ~ Michael Hoffman III, Cereal Murder and the Group Mind, 2000.

The Joan Fuster School is named after Joan Fuster i Ortells (November 23, 1922 – June 21, 1992), who was a Spanish writer. He is considered a major writer in Catalan language, and his work contributed to reinvigorate left-wing, pro-Catalan nationalism in Valencia during the Spanish transition to democracy. In his influential political essay Nosaltres, els valencians (1962) he coined the term Països Catalans (Catalan Countries) to refer to the Catalan-speaking territories, for which he claimed independent statehood from Spain. Intriguingly, datewise, on September 11, 1981, two bombs exploded in his house, damaging heavily his library and archive. Nobody was prosecuted, but it is widely believed that it was the anti-Catalan far right's response to Fuster's political and cultural position.

In the school attack today, a substitute teacher shot was dead from the use of a crossbow. Four others were injured, including two female teachers.

The Spanish Teachers' Union says this is the first ever case of a pupil carrying out fatal attack on teacher in Spain.

Due to the legal system in Spain, the student cannot be charged for attack as he is under the criminal age of responsibility in Spain. Police have detained a 13-year-old after a teacher was shot dead with a crossbow and several others injured in a Barcelona secondary school.

"A male teacher was killed shortly after 9am this morning at the Joan Fuster secondary school in Barcelona," a police spokesman told The Local.

The weapon used in the attack was widely reported to be a crossbow, but there was no official confirmation from police.

The male teacher, thought to have been working as a social sciences substitute, was killed after being shot with a crossbow by a 13-year-old pupil, who was also armed with a dagger (or a machete, in some reports).

She confirmed that four others had been injured. "Two female teachers and two pupils suffered injuries and three of them are recovering well in hospital," the spokesman for the Catalan police force told The Local.

A report in the Vanguardia said he was obsessed with the military and had a collection of weapons at home. A fellow pupil told the Catalan newspaper that his classmate had said he wanted to kill all the teachers at the school and was known to draw up blacklists.

According to reports in Spanish media, the male pupil arrived late at school, at around 9:15 a.m.

The teacher who was killed reportedly came running from the next door class room when he heard screams.

Spanish media are reporting that the pupil fired at a female teacher who opened the door to him, as well as her daughter, who was one of his fellow pupils.

Hearing screams, a teacher from a neighboring classroom came running to help and was fatally shot in the chest.

The teacher "left to see what was happening and that was when the young man attacked him," one student, who requested anonymity, told AFP.

Moments later the suspect went into the teacher's own classroom, attacked a girl and went back into the hallway with a knife in his hand.

Terrified students closed the classroom door and barricaded it with furniture.

Apparently, the Spanish media are publishing graphic imagery, such as above.

In 2012, a man was arrested for reportedly planning to plant bombs around a university in Palma de Mallorca. The man had written in an online blog and personal diary of his admiration for the 1999 Columbine killers in Colorado.

The Joan Fuster attack was carried out on the 16th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School in the US, when two students murdered 12 students and one teacher.

The attack on Monday morning also immediately sparked comparisons to the fictional story, We Need to Talk about Kevin, in which dysfunctional teenager Kevin carried out a crossbow massacre at his high school gym.

The 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver was turned into a movie in 2011 starring Tilda Swinton.

Spain has had three previous well-known cases of crossbow attacks, according to El Pais.

In 2009, a German man who was reportedly mentally ill became obsessed with Spanish actress Sara Casanovas. The man found Casanovas at a Madrid theatre, fired the crossbow aimed at her, but she was able to dodge the shot and stage technicians restrained him until police arrived.

The Barcelona area was the site of a similar crossbow crime in 1994 when 20-year-old Andrés Rabadán, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, killed his own father before turning himself in.

In 1986, a man and his brother-in-law were charged for killing a man, who was allegedly extorting one of the perpetrators, by beating him with a baseball bat, stabbing him in the arm with a crossbow arrow and shooting him with a shotgun.

This may be one of the most dangerous copycat times of the year.

April 19th is the anniversary of the deaths occurring at the end of the Waco events and the Oklahoma City bombing. It is an older anniversary of the Revolutionary War, of militia deaths, and other violent incidents - Patriots' Day, celebrated in Massachusetts and Maine. 

The Boston Marathon Bombing took place two years ago - in 2013. This race happens on Patriots' Day.

Patriots' Day (sometimes incorrectly punctuated Patriot's Day or Patriots Day) is a civic holiday commemorating the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. It is observed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and State of Maine (once part of Massachusetts), and is a public school observance day in Wisconsin. Observances and re-enactments of these first battles of the American Revolution occur annually at Lexington Green in Lexington, Massachusetts, (around 6 am) and The Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts (around 9 am). In the morning, a mounted re-enactor with State Police escort retraces Paul Revere's ride, calling out warnings the whole way.

In 2013, the race ended very badly, with the bombing.

Let's also revisit April 19th for 1993 and 1995, for a moment.

The Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, when the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located nine miles east-northeast of Waco, Texas. An exchange of gunfire resulted in the deaths of four agents and six followers of David Koresh. A subsequent 51-day siege by the Federal Bureau of Investigation ended on April 19th when fire destroyed the compound. Seventy-six people (24 of them British nationals) died in the fire, including more than 20 children, two pregnant women, and Koresh himself.

The Oklahoma City bombing was the bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, when American militia movement sympathizer Timothy McVeigh allegedly detonated a truck filled with explosives parked in front of the building. McVeigh's co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, had assisted in the bomb preparation. Their motive allegedly was to avenge the government's handling of the Waco siege and Ruby Ridge incidents. (Intriguingly, Rebirth of Pan author Jim Brandon has pointed out to me that "Nichols" and its variations are on his "names of power" list to watch.)

Then Columbine happened on April 20, 1999.

On April 20, 1999, two teenage students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, carried out a deadly shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado killing 12 students and a teacher, and wounding 24 others before dying by suicide.

This is a danger zone time of year for school violence. Columbine haunts the world of school violence. Just in 1999, over 500 copycat threats and incidents occurred in North America.

Let's not forget that Columbine happened on Hitler's birthday too.

Then on April 26, 2002, on Rudolf Hess's birthday, Robert Steinhäuser, killed 16 people plus himself at his Erfurt, Germany high school. He had files on his computer, which contained information about the Columbine Massacre. Steinhäuser had outdone the Columbine total (which may have been one of his goals).

Adolf Hitler, it will be recalled, died by his own hand, ten days after his birthday, on April 30, 1945, exactly 70 years ago, in 2015.

The Virginia Tech shooting (also known as the Virginia Tech massacre) was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech, shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others in two separate attacks (another six people were injured escaping from classroom windows), approximately two hours apart, before dying by suicide. Cho noted the Columbine killers in his writings. There is no doubt it was a copycat.

In Cho Seung-Hui's twisted and tortured mind, the Columbine killers were martyrs on a par with Jesus Christ. And the world had forced him to join their ranks. Friendless by choice, he accepted Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as his brothers, and dreamed that his violent acts would bear "children." ~ "Cho idolized Columbine killers," Denver Post, April 18, 2007.

Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui plagiarized other school shooting psychos in a twisted show of one-upmanship. He used the Internet to research and learn from infamous school killers, including Columbine's Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold..."Cho was an empty vessel and he poured himself full from images off the Internet...," said Loren Coleman, an expert on school shootings and the author of The Copycat Effect. "There's a psychological process that these shooters appear to be competing for - the high body count." ~ "Sick homages from a student of psychos," N.Y. Post, April 22, 2007.

I have been warning about this "Red Danger Zone" time for years. Now the Grim Reaper has struck in Spain.

Murder and suicide are two sides of the same coin played out in going postal, workplace violence, shooting spree, and school shooting incidents, which are impacted by the copycat effect. Watch for any of those this week too.

Being forewarned and aware is half the battle. Vulnerable, suicidal, homicidal youth need help and attention, long before it gets to the stage where they feel there's no turning back. Keep talking, take care, get people help, and remain alert, with your guard up.

A few bloggers may wish to demean the predictive insights of known patterns, but ridicule does not overwhelm the reality of history. Killers do pick special dates.

And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." ~ Magnolia, 1999.

4.4.14: The Winter Soldier, Jinn, and Fort Hood?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens on April 4, 2014. Remember what happened when the initial Captain America first was released?

The day of neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik's massacre in Norway (July 22, 2011) was the day of the release of the film Captain America (July 22, 2011), with the film's first scene taking place in Norway, to the sound of Nazis' rapid fire machine gunning. A bizarre coincidence, to say the least.

All this lead me to ask on July 19, 2012, "What will happen on July 20, 2012?," with that year's upcoming Friday release of The Dark Knight Rises.

We know, now, don't we? The Aurora theater shooting. 

Predictions are only helpful if people take precautions. A journalist wrote a Dangerous Minds article later, entitled: "The Copycat Effect: Meet The Man Who Predicted The Aurora Shooting." Nothing has really changed, as far as we can tell.

Certainly, we are in different times here in 2014 than we were in 2012. Newtown/Sandy Hook has taken place. The Boston Marathon bombing occurred. Mass shootings are part of the landscape too frequently. The Fort Hood shooting on April 2, 2014 may have already released the jinn from the bottle. Soldiers. Mass Shootings. Fort Hood & the Bell Name Game. BTW, the film Jinn is being released on 4.4.14, too. The purpose of the movie Jinn is to "introduce the accurate mythological concept of the jinn to western audiences."

Something is already in the air. 

Should we expect mass violence this weekend, regarding soldiers, jinn, and shooting sprees? Let's hope not.

Nevertheless, we are heading into April, which has been the month of Copycat Effects. Waco (April 19, 1993), OKBomb (April 19, 1995), Columbine (April 20, 1999), VA Tech (April 16, 2007), Boston Marathon bombings (April 15, 2013) and so many major and minor copycats are tied to this terrible month of violence.

April is the cruellest month... 

by T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). 

 From The Waste Land, 1922.

Ozymandias vs Winter Soldier

In antiquity, Ozymandias was an alternative name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias, January 11, 1818

Ricin Wicker Man

The name game demons have been released.

On Tuesday, April 16, 2013, the anniversary of the VA Tech massacre and the day after the Patriots' Day Boston Marathon bombing, the spotlight focused on "Wicker."

The U.S. Senate office of Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) received a letter with a substance that has tested positive for Ricin, it was noted today by media and law enforcement sources. No date has been shared as to when the letter was received. The substance underwent three tests to make certain there was no error in the Ricin results.

"Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said members were briefed that the substance had been found in a letter and a suspect has been identified. McCaskill said the letter came from an individual who frequently writes to lawmakers. She wouldn’t identify the person but confirmed officials had identified someone. McCaskill said state offices have been told what to look for if there are more letters containing the toxic substance," said the news service Politico.

"Americans are going to wake up Thursday morning with Puerto Rico well on its way to becoming the 51st state, and they're going to ask why weren't we informed?" — Roger Wicker, a few years ago, in one of the few quotes his legacy has left on the Internet.

The Wicker Man is a highly symbolic Pagan image.

The Wicker Man is set on fire to pay tribute to the gods. The sacrifice of the humans inside is part of a religious ritual to increase fertility, crops, commerce, or merely to re-ignite the chances that bad times will disappear.

According to Julius Caesar in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentary on the Gallic Wars), the Wicker Man was a large wicker statue of a human used by the ancient Druids (priests of Celtic paganism) for human sacrifice by burning it in effigy. Other records talk of people being placed inside.

It appears to go beyond coincidence to find the moniker of Wicker turning up during incidents from 1976-1977's Son of Sam killings ("The Wicked King Wicker") to 2008's Chicago's Wicker Park accounts of "Phantom Clowns" and near-abductions of children.

The Son of Sam events, btw, took place in the Pelham Bay area of New York City's northernmost borough, the Bronx.

The Hotel Pelham (above) existed from 1857 to 1916, on Boylston Street, at the corner of Tremont Street, Boston, Massachusetts, very close to being across the street from the first bomb explosion at the end of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.

For more on the Wicker Man, see my 2009 essay on the topic here.

Cinematically, the doomed law enforcement "Wicker Men" have all strangely grimaced as their fate was decided by the Pagans. You know, sort of like the Joker's smile.

Beheadings & Batman

As we travel into the new darkness being revealed in 2012, we should not forget the reality of beheadings in the background of the Batman blackness.

Batman Beheading

On Saturday, June 28, 2008, at Six Flags Over Georgia, 17-year-old Asia Leeshawn Ferguson of Springfield, South Carolina, scaled two six-foot fences and passed through restricted areas posted as dangerous to visitors. Ferguson jumped the fences and was then decapitated by the Batman roller coaster. 

Tim McLean's tatoo.

It should not be lost on people that the victim of the Canadian bus beheading (July 30, 2008) was a young man who told his friends he "loved being a carny," who sported the Joker-like tattoo (above) on his back. Tim McLean was headed to Winnipeg after working with the carnival in Edmonton, Alberta. His links to Joker/clowns/Jokawild and more were discussed, in depth, here.

Remember, The Dark Knight was released on July 18, 2008.

On August 5, 2008, The Boston Herald reporter Stephen Schaefer asked, "Is The Dark Knight cursed?"

It was only a matter of time until the mainstream media would catch on to this "curse." People have been mumbling about it since Heath Ledger died. As those watching for the curse of threes have noticed, Ledger died, Christian Bale was arrested and then Morgan Freeman has been in a tragic car crash.

Schaefer writes:

The box-office behemoth, expected to pass the $400 million mark this week, is notorious as being the late Heath Ledger's last completed movie.

Now Morgan Freeman, the 71-year-old actor who plays Batman's techie Lucius Fox, is in serious condition following a car accident in Mississippi late Sunday night.

The Oscar-winning actor was driving his wife's friend Demaris Meyer's 1997 Nissan Maxima when it rolled off Tallahatchie County Highway 32, flipping over several times. Meyer was treated for minor injuries and released.

Freeman, who was driving to his Charleston home, reportedly suffered broken ribs and was air-lifted to Regional Medical Center in Tennessee.

This tragedy follows assault allegations made last month by the mother and sister of "The Dark Knight" star Christian Bale. The 34-year-old Bale denied the charges. He'll be back in court next month.

The Dark Knight is dedicated to both the 28-year-old Ledger, who died of an accidental overdose last Jan. 22, and Conway Wickliffe, 41, a stunt supervisor who died in a freak accident in London while setting up a car crash.

Blogger Todd Campbell, after he read an early sharing of these thoughts, forwarded the following photographs to my attention, from the movie. He posted on this, as well, in 2008.

What do we find these photos have revealed?

Embedded within the movie was the Heath Ledger character, the Joker, using the Joker/Death card as his "business calling card," as pictured, shown holding a decapitated head. 

Schaefer wrote that The Dark Knight joined a grim list of "cursed" films. Most people are familiar with them.

Curses Abound

The Superman hex struck Christopher Reeve, who shot to fame after starring in the 1978 movie, after he broke his neck in a horse riding accident. Television's original "Superman," George Reeves died in an apparent suicide in 1969.

In June 2007, a teenager's legs were severed when cables snapped on the Superman  Tower of Power ride at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom in Louisville, Kentucky.

The 1982 horror classic Poltergeist was haunted by the premature deaths of two of its female stars. Vanity Fair celebrity scribe Dominick Dunne's daughter Dominique was murdered by her live-in lover soon after the film was finished. Heather O'Rourke, the film's child star, died in 1988 at age 12 of cardiopulmonary arrest prompted by Crohn's disease. For all of its sensationalism, in the end, the Poltergeist curse only documents four deaths.

I have written of the "Mothman Death Curse" online and specifically in the August 2004 issue of Fortean Times, with a list of over 80-related deaths, some of surprisingly young people and others of elder members of the crew, cast, and aligned associates of the film, in West Virginia and elsewhere.

VA Tech Beheading

On Wednesday, January 21, 2009, (a year after Heath Ledger's death) police reported a woman was slain on the Virginia Tech campus and decapitated. Xin Yang, 22, was killed after arriving at the campus from Beijing on January 8 to begin studying accounting, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.

The first 911 call came into police around 7:06 p.m., saying a woman was being assaulted inside the Graduate Life Center, just outside the Au Bon Pain cafe.

A police officer who responded to an emergency call has told how she entered the cafe to find the male attacker holding the female victim's head in his hand. Police say the victim was decapitated with a kitchen knife while having coffee at the cafe with the suspect.

Responding officers found the woman had been stabbed to death and beheaded. They arrested the suspect, a 25-year-old Chinese graduate student named Haiyang Zhu. He is a Ph.D. student in agricultural and applied economics. The police also recovered a large kitchen knife they believe was used at the scene.

Haiyang Zhu was charged with first-degree murder and is being held in Montgomery County jail.

Au Bon Pain - French for "place of good bread" - was founded by Louis Kane (remember the comic character Batman was created by Bob Kane) as a bakery in Boston's historically significant Faneuil Hall in 1978, known for Samuel Adams' revolutionary speeches and its famous grasshopper weathervane used to tell British spies from Patriots. In 1982 Au Bon Pain debuted a bakery cart at Logan Airport in Boston. Au Bon Pain Inc. (later renamed Panera Bread Company) went public in 1991, and today has 230 units worldwide.

The Au Bon Pain decapitation was the first violence on the VA Tech campus since April 16, 2007, when Korean student Seung-Hui Cho killed two students at West Ambler Johnston Hall, and then two hours later, after walking across campus to Norris Hall, killed 30 others and himself.

From Batman to Mothman, whether or not there are curses is not important. As the spectre of decapitations grows in the Mideast, we need to be aware. The fact that they have become part of popular culture and that there is a dark sense that there may be such things in the modern world, in the end, may be what becomes more significant. If they are foreshadowing other storms, dawns, and wicked things coming this way remains to be seen.

As seen in Sydney, Australia on September 15, 2012.