Dawn of the Dead Film Site Is Scene of Multiple Mall Shooting

Gunfire erupted at the Monroeville Mall, a Pittsburgh-area shopping center, on February 7, 2015, Saturday evening, critically wounding two of the three people hit in a shooting that targeted one of the victims. The Monroeville Mall and Forbes Hospital's emergency room were placed on lockdown as police searched for the suspect (a black male in his late teens who is between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-9 inches tall and was wearing dark clothing).

 Photo credit (above and below).

The shootings occurred inside the Macy's at the Monroeville Mall at about 7:30 p.m., sending shoppers running. Police closed the entire mall for the night. 

Seventeen-year-old Tarod Thornhill was arrested at 3:15 am, February 8, 2015, and charged as an adult in the Monroeville Mall shootings.

Chief Douglas Cole said two men and a woman were shot, including a man who was targeted and was struck at least once. Bystanders were the others, who were caught in the line of fire.

Jeanette, Pennsylvania native and NFL (Oakland Raiders, Seattle Seahawks, Kansas City Chiefs, 2011-Present) quarterback Terrelle Pryor, 25, tweeted that he was at the mall, a short drive east of Pittsburgh.

"Damn was just in monroeville mall and just saw 2 ppl get shot," he tweeted. "They are letting guns go in there."

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On January 17, 2015, one person was killed and one was wounded in a shooting inside the Melbourne (Florida) Square Mall's food court before the gunman, José Garcia Rodriguez, died by suicide. Source.
In late December 2014, hundreds of teenagers gathered at the Monroeville (Pennsylvania) Mall and several fights broke out. The fights caused local officials and mall administration to agree on a plan to increase security there.

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Four on-duty police officers have been stationed in the Monroeville Mall on Friday and Saturday evenings at the mall's request.

The Monroeville Mall was the film location for George Romero's Dawn of the Dead which completed primary filming 37 years ago this month (February 1978-February 2015). [The remake, Dawn of the Dead (2004) was directed by Zack Snyder in his feature film directorial debut. The screenplay for the 2004 version was by James Gunn, who went on to direct Guardians of the Galaxy.]

Dawn of the Dead (also known internationally as Zombi) is a 1978 American horror film written and directed by George A. Romero. It was the second film made in Romero's Living Deadseries, but contains no characters or settings from Night of the Living Dead, and shows in a larger scale the apocalyptic effects on society. Dawn of the Dead was filmed over approximately four months, from late 1977 to early 1978, in the Pennsylvania cities of Pittsburgh and Monroeville. Dawn of the Dead's primary filming location was the Monroeville Mall.

The history of Dawn of the Dead began in 1974, when George A. Romero was invited by friend Mark Mason of Oxford Development Company—whom Romero knew from an acquaintance at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon—to visit the Monroeville Mall, which Mason's company managed. After showing Romero hidden parts of the mall, during which Romero noted the bliss of the consumers, Mason jokingly suggested that someone would be able to survive in the mall should an emergency ever occur. With this inspiration, Romero began to write the screenplay for the film.
Romero and his producer, Richard P. Rubinstein, were unable to procure any domestic investors for the new project. By chance, word of the sequel reached Italian horror director Dario Argento. A fan of Night of the Living Dead and an early critical proponent of the film, Argento was eager to help the horror classic receive a sequel. He met Romero and Rubinstein, helping to secure financing in exchange for international distribution rights. Argento invited Romero to Rome so he would have a change of scenery while writing the screenplay. The two could also then discuss plot developments. Romero was able to secure the availability of Monroeville Mall as well as additional financing through his connections with the mall's owners at Oxford Development. Once the casting was completed, principal shooting was scheduled to begin in Pennsylvania on November 13, 1977. Source.

Principal photography for Dawn of the Living Dead (its working title at the time) began on November 13, 1977 at the Monroeville Mall....Principal photography on Dawn of the Dead ended February 1978. Source.

Because Dawn of the Dead was filmed there, today the Monroeville Mall is a tourist stop for Zombie film fans.

Monroeville Mall is most famous as the filming location for the movie Dawn of the Dead, the 1978 cult horror classic, directed by George A. Romero. In 1977, George A. Romero began filming Dawn of the Dead on location at the Monroeville Mall. All filming inside the mall took place at night after the mall had closed, with filming often continuing until dawn. Filming in the mall began in October 1977, but had to be suspended when the mall's Christmas decorations were hung shortly after Thanksgiving. Filming resumed in January after the decorations were removed. It was during that break that much of the mall's exterior shots were filmed, as well as filming at other locations. In the film's storyline, the mall was used as a fortress to protect four human survivors from a world taken over by the walking dead. The movie went on to become a huge hit worldwide. Fans travel far and wide, sometimes from other countries, just to have a chance to visit the location. Several pictures taken during the filming are on display in a room on the upper level near Macy's. In addition, Monroeville Zombies, located on the lower level near Macy's and features an in-store museum and gift shop that is dedicated to celebrating zombies in film and pop culture. The museum's main focus is Dawn of the Dead and contains artifacts, memorabilia, scale models of the mall as depicted in the movie and a boiler room walk through with various life sized replicas of movie zombies. In 2013, The museum was relocated to Evans City, PA, home of the original Night Of The Living Dead. Source.

Other links to popular culture include,

 ~ The ice skating rink at Monroeville Mall appears in the 1983 film Flashdance as the rink on which Jeanne auditions. 

~ Some scenes from the film Zack and Miri Make a Porno, directed by Kevin Smith, were filmed in the mall. The film features a fictional recreational hockey team named the Monroeville Zombies, a reference to the Romero film. Source.

~ In the 1984 children's fantasy film The Boy Who Loved Trolls, 12-year old Paul is seen wandering through the halls of the mall as shots of many long gone storefronts such as the Candy Tree are shown. (Dawn of the Dead's Tom Savini, pictured, plays a motorcyclist in The Boy Who Loved Trolls.)

~ The Monroeville Mall marquee, overlooking U.S. Route 22, is shown in a brief scene in the Greg Mottola film Adventureland.
~ Exterior scenes of the mall annex appeared recurring on the Showtime series, Queer as Folk. Source.
~ Stephen King's 1983 novel Christine takes place in the fictional suburb of Libertyville, Pennsylvania, which is adjacent to Monroeville. The Monroeville Mall is mentioned repeatedly. Source.

H/T to Robert Schneck. 

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Jupiter Ascending

February 6, 2015: Jupiter reaches opposition, meaning it's opposite to the sun in our sky. Therefore, Jupiter rises around the time the sun sets, shines highest about midnight and sets around sunrise. Opposition is also when Jupiter is closest to Earth for the year, appearing biggest and brightest. Look for it in the east as the blue sky darkens. When you face Jupiter, Venus is almost directly behind you.
How impressive is Jupiter this month? The giant world burns at magnitude minus 2.6, three times as bright as Sirius, the brightest star, which sparkles very far to Jupiter's right or lower right on February evenings. NBC News

Meanwhile, on the theater screens beginning February 6th...

Delayed from 2014....

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Umbrella People

In an incident occurring on January 28, and uploaded on February 1, 2015, a Chinese woman with an umbrella is making the rounds of YouTube. She takes on three guys who are being disruptive at a Chinese restaurant. Said to be real and not fictional, it has been highlighted in the media, of late, such as here.

Let's look at a few other umbrella people.

First up, some scenes from a short Errol Morris documentary that takes a skeptical view of the reports of a mystery man, the so-called "Umbrella Man" at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, at the site of the John F. Kennedy assassination, November 22, 1963.

Josiah Thompson, author of Six Seconds In Dallas, considers the following by John Updike:

In December 1967 John Updike was writing “Talk of the Town” for The New Yorker. And he spent most of that “Talk of the Town” column talking about the “umbrella man.” He said that his learning of the existence of the umbrella man made him speculate that in historical research there may be a dimension similar to the quantum dimension in physical reality. If you put any event under a microscope you will find a whole dimension of completely weird, incredible things going on. It’s as if there’s the macro level of historical research where things sort of obey natural laws and the usual things happen and unusual things don’t happen. And then there’s this other level where everything is really weird.

On December 5, 2011, Russ Baker wrote well-articulated rebuttal to the above short video, entitled "JFK Umbrella Man—More Doubts."

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

As you’ll recall, the New York Times’ preferred explanation for why a man opened an umbrella on a sunny day, just as JFK’s limousine passed—and just as the bullets poured into the car— was an entirely benign one. Strange, but benign.

Recap: Fifteen years after the assassination, as the special House Select Committee on Assassinations was taking the first serious look at the death of JFK (and others), a man came forward to identify himself as the so-called “Umbrella Man” and to explain his bizarre behavior.

The man, Steven Louie Witt, said that, no, it was not someone signaling the shooters, and no, it had nothing at all to do with the assassination. Instead, he said, it was a message against appeasement of enemies. He hoped to signal his disapproval of what he considered JFK’s forbearance of America’s enemies.

How to signal that? Here’s where it gets complicated. Witt claimed he held up the umbrella as an icon symbolizing the treachery of Neville Chamberlain, the 1930s British prime minister. Chamberlain, who tried to preserve peace with Hitler by ceding him a part of Czechoslovakia (the Sudetenland), became a reviled symbol of appeasement. The self-described Umbrella Man said that he had been identifying appeasement with Chamberlain’s trademark umbrella. The connection to JFK came via his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, ambassador to Britain at the time and an anti-war isolationist.

Only a very unusual 15-year-old American (Witt’s approximate age in 1938) would have strong feelings about a British prime minister’s behavior, and still harbor those feelings a quarter century later. It is even harder to accept that he could believe JFK, himself a young man in 1938, might “get” the message somehow via the umbrella.

Even if we are to accept that Witt really was the man pumping the umbrella on the Grassy Knoll, and even if he was cognizant of Chamberlain, and even if he did think he could get a message to JFK via the Chamberlain affair, we still have a big problem with this claim.

According to John Simkin, a retired British history teacher and textbook author who runs the historical website Spartacus Educational, the umbrella was never the symbol of Chamberlain that the “umbrella man” claimed it was.

“In Britain, there was never any association with an umbrella at all,” Simkin told me. “Everyone had umbrellas and bowlers in those days.” According to Simkin, the only proper symbol for Chamberlain and appeasement was a piece of paper. That was the document he held aloft, with Hitler’s signature to the so-called Munich Agreement—in which Hitler agreed not to seek any further territorial gains in Europe—as Chamberlain famously declared that he had secured “peace in our time.” (In this old newsreel, you can see Chamberlain hold aloft that document.)

Simkin finds the New York Times video’s assertion that the purpose of opening the umbrella and pumping it in the air to signal Munich simply laughable.

More likely, it was exactly what it appeared to be: a method of signaling shooters, perhaps that JFK had been hit, perhaps that he still seemed to be alive, perhaps to keep shooting. Although it was a sunny day, it had rained the night before, and there was a wind, so it would not have been operationally illogical to move forward with using an umbrella. The fact that the New York Times and the establishment in general have never considered the umbrella worthy of real, serious inquiry, tells us that if the umbrella waspart of a plot, it was not so bad a choice.

RIO GRANDE BUILDING

In the last article, I mentioned that Witt, the self-proclaimed “Umbrella Man,” worked for Rio Grande National Life Insurance in the Rio Grande building. I mentioned that the same building housed the Immigration office frequented by Lee Harvey Oswald, and the local office of the highly negligent Secret Service. I mentioned that Rio Grande wrote a lot of insurance for the military. And, separately, I noted the strong military intelligence connections to key figures connected with 11/22/63.

One thing I did not mention, but should have, was that Military Intelligence itself had offices in that Rio Grande building.

Now, all of that could be coincidence. But there’s a reason certain entities signed leases with particular landlords and not others—especially so in Dallas circa 1963 (more on this in Family of Secrets.) Source.

More on the skeptical view, see also this.

The real danger of a video like the one about the Umbrella Man is that it encourages people to stop questioning, stop investigating. Just laugh it all off. As many would say, "There’s no trouble here in the land of the free, the home of the brave. Nothing to see here, folks, move along, move along."

Next up,

9/7/1978 (American style)

The Bulgarian umbrella is the name of an umbrella with a hidden pneumatic mechanism which injected a small poisonous pellet containing ricin. The weapon has a hollowed stalk into which the pellet neatly sits.
Such an umbrella was allegedly used in the assassination of the Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov on September 7, 1978 (the birthday of the Bulgarian State Council chairman Todor Zhivkov who had often been the target of Georgi Markov's criticism) on Waterloo Bridge in London, (Markov died three days later) and also allegedly used in the failed assassination attempt against the Bulgarian dissident journalist Vladimir Kostov the same year [on August 26, 1978] in the Paris Métro. The poison used in both cases was ricin. Both assassination attempts are believed to have been organized by the Bulgarian Secret Service of the time of the Cold War with the assistance of the KGB. Source.

Markov, thus, died on September 11, 1978 (9/11/1978).

This is a replica of the umbrella - modified to fire a tiny pellet filled with poison - used by the KGB in 1978 to assassinate dissident Georgi Markov.

Then,

3/30/1981 (American style)

On March 21, 1981, Ronald Reagan, the new President of the United States, visited Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. with his wife Nancy for a fundraising event. He recalled, "I looked up at the presidential box above the stage where Abe Lincoln had been sitting the night he was shot and felt a curious sensation... I thought that even with all the Secret Service protection we now had, it was probably still possible for someone who had enough determination to get close enough to a president to shoot him."
On March 30, 1981, only 69 days into the new administration, Ronald Reagan, his press secretary James Brady, Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty, and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy were struck by gunfire from would-be assassin John Hinckley, Jr., outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. Although "close to death" upon arrival at George Washington University Hospital, Reagan was stabilized in the emergency room, then underwent emergency exploratory surgery. He recovered and was released from the hospital on April 11, becoming the first serving U.S. President to survive being shot in an assassination attempt.

Brady died August 4, 2014.

Hinkeley's face is visible in this photo, to the left of the NBC umbrella sheltering the NBC camera crew, who would soon film the attempted assassination of Reagan. 

4/11/1981 (American style)

April 11, 1981: US President Ronald Reagan smiles and waves as he stands under an umbrella with First Lady Nancy Reagan after leaving George Washington Hospital, Washington, DC. The president recovered from an attempted assassination attempt by John Hinckley. Several secret service agents stand in the background. (Photo by Ronald Reagan Library). Source.

Moving along, back to the future...

5/2011

5/9/2012

An assassin armed with a poisoned-tipped umbrella is being hunted by police after killing a man - in a case bearing chilling echoes of the murder of a Bulgarian dissident on London’s Waterloo Bridge.
The 40-year-old German man died of mercury poisoning after being jabbed in the buttocks by a mystery attacker carrying the modified weapon.
The unnamed victim told police he was attacked by a slim stranger who had a sticking plaster on his face before falling into a coma.
He died on Wednesday [May 9, 2012] almost a year after the hit in Hannover, Germany. Source.

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1/26/2015

Robyn Rihanna Fenty (born February 20, 1988) is seen here on January 26, 2015, two days after Rihanna announced a new song via Twitter, "FourFiveSeconds," with Kanye West and Paul McCartney. The song will be performed by the three at the 2015 Grammys, the 57th, on February 8, 2015.

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TransAsia Flight 235, MH17 and Other 17s

At the beginning of the day, February 4, 2015, 17 people were missing in the crash of TransAsia Flight 235 into a bridge over Taiwan's Keelung River. By the end of the day, the final death toll may be 34 (2x17) people.

Many have compared this real life scene to the one in Knowing (2009). See also, Knowing is a Dark Stargate (2009).

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The film is about predictions, numbers, and more.

The aircraft we know today as "MH17" had its first flight 17 years ago on July 17, 1997, and was shot down on July 17, 2014. Source.

That's a lot of 17s.

Photos by the 17-year-old Stanley Kubrick. 235, 237. See more here.

According to Plutarch's Moralia, the Egyptians have a legend that the end of Osiris's life came on the seventeenth of a month, on which day it is quite evident to the eye that the period of the full moon is over. Now, because of this, the Pythagoreans call this day "the Barrier," and utterly abominate this number. For the number seventeen, coming in between the square sixteen and the oblong rectangle eighteen, which, as it happens, are the only plane figures that have their perimeters equal their areas, bars them off from each other and disjoins them, and breaks up the epogdoon by its division into unequal intervals. Source.

Osiris' wife is Isis.

Unlucky number 17
The number 17 is considered unlucky in Italy so most Italian-owned ships avoid it. MSC Cruises doesn't have a cabin 17 or deck 17 on any ships across fleet. Why? The Roman numeral XVII is changed anagrammatically to VIXI, which in Latin translates to "I have lived". In other words: "My life is over". For the same reason you can bet that the Chinese won't be booking any cabins on decks four, or nine. Source.

Here is the number 17 on the X-Files. For much, much more on #17, see "Synchromystism 17."

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H/Ts to Steve L and Chris T.

Valhalla: 2.3

On February 3, 2015, six people were killed when a 10-car Metro-North train packed with commuters from New York City hit a car and caught fire on the railroad tracks in Valhalla, Westchester, New York. At the height of evening rush hour, the incident sparked a fiery crash that's also injured at least 12 people. The train out of Grand Central Terminal was going northbound on the Harlem line when it struck a Jeep Cherokee (that was stopped on the track when the R/R gates came down) at the Commerce Street crossing in Valhalla at about 6:30 p.m. 

Hundreds of passengers were being taken by ambulances and MTA buses to Pleaseantville.

In Norse mythology, Valhalla (from Old Norse Valhöll "hall of the slain") is a majestic, enormous hall located in Asgard, ruled over by the god Odin. Chosen by Odin, half of those who die in combat travel to Valhalla upon death, led by valkyries, while the other half go to the goddess Freyja's field Fólkvangr. In Valhalla, the dead join the masses of those who have died in combat known as Einherjar, as well as various legendary Germanic heroes and kings, as they prepare to aid Odin during the events of Ragnarök. Before the hall stands the golden tree Glasir, and the hall's ceiling is thatched with golden shields. Various creatures live around Valhalla, such as the stag Eikþyrnir and the goat Heiðrún, both described as standing atop Valhalla and consuming the foliage of the tree Læraðr.

Year of the Goat begins on February 15, 2015.

"Walhalla" (1896) by Max Brückner.

The Westchester Real Estate site is not shy about death and their Valhalla: "Valhalla isn’t just where Vikings go when they die; it is where smart central Westchester residents live. Valhalla, NY is a hamlet in the town of Mount Pleasant which is served by the Valhalla School District and punctuated by a quaint downtown, a scenic train station and Kensico Dam. Kensico is one of the largest dams in New York State and is adjacent to downtown Valhalla. Valhalla does indeed have a connection with many great people who have departed, as Kensico Cemetery is the final resting place of such notables as Ayn Rand, Lou Gehrig, Tommy Dorsey, Danny Kaye, and Billie Burke, the Good Witch of the North."

Groundhog Day, Anniversary Syndrome, and the Houston-Brown Drownings

As many of you know, an area of academic research I’ve conducted involves the sociological and historical impact and the mystery of death and dying among humans. I have done work and written books on suicides, suicide prevention, murder-suicide timing, "going postal" events, and school shootings. I have penned obituaries to celebrate life, to avoid dwelling on the type or moment of death, but instead to reinforce the remembering of a person’s entire legacy.

There are well-known but little-discussed syndromes that involve “when” people die that have always intrigued me: the “Anniversary” and the “Birthday” reactions and syndromes, for example.

The film Groundhog Day is a metaphorical journey about the Anniversary Syndrome.

One recent news item highlights the Anniversary Syndrome and how it is a form of the copycat effect. It is often quite evident if the method and timing are reflective of the circumstances of the death being copied.

Bobbi Kristina Brown, the late Whitney Houston's 21-year-old daughter with singer Bobby Brown, was rushed to a hospital in Roswell, Georgia, on January 31, 2015, Saturday morning after her husband and a friend found her in the tub. Her husband Nick Gordon performed CPR.

A police report released on February 2nd said officers responded to the home in reference to a drowning. The narrative of the incident offered no information about the young woman's condition or the circumstances leading to her being found.

Bobbi Kristina Brown is reportedly in an induced coma and has "significantly diminished" brain function.

On February 11, 2012, Whitney Houston was found unconscious in Suite 434 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, California, submerged in the bathtub; she was later pronounced dead. The cause of death was not immediately known. It was later ruled by the coroner to have been an "accidental drowning." Beverly Hills paramedics arrived at approximately 3:30 p.m. and found the singer unresponsive and performed CPR. Houston was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. PST. Local police said there were "no obvious signs of criminal intent." On March 22, 2012, the Los Angeles County coroner's office reported the cause of Houston's death was drowning and the "effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use." The office stated the amount of cocaine found in Houston's body indicated that she used the substance shortly before her death. Toxicology results revealed additional drugs in her system: Benadryl, Xanax, marijuana and Flexeril. The manner of death was listed as an "accident."

Houston performed "The Star Spangled Banner" at Super Bowl XXV at Tampa Stadium on January 27, 1991.

Whitney Houston's "accidental" bathtub death and her daughter's apparent bathtub drowning both occurred around the same time of year. But more significantly, the two events seemed to have some relationship to being near the dates of 2012's and 2015's NFL Super Bowls.

In 2012, Super Bowl XLVI was played on February 5th. The New York Giants defeated The New England Patriots by a score of 21 to 17. Whitney Houston died on February 11th. The main halftime show performer was Madonna, with M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj.

In 2015, Super Bowl XLIX was played on February 1st. The New England Patriots defeated the Seattle Seahawks by a score of 28 to 24. The main halftime show performer was Katy Perry, with Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliot.

Ritualized directional hand signs? Katy Perry wears a 49 jersey.

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Conspiracy videos after Whitney Houston died talked of her being killed by the Illumanti. See here.

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New conspiracy theories are floating around regarding the new Brown news, such as this one posted on YouTube by a Mr. Cati. BTW, Whitney Houston was 48, not 49, when she died. She would have been 49 on her birthday of August 9, 2012.

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But what if it is nothing more than the Anniversary Syndrome?

It is a matter of native folk knowledge that some people appear to wait until a loved one's specific death anniversary, or their own birthday, to die on during those nearby times. Research has proven it has a basis in fact.

Holidays are anniversaries of important events. Holidays and death go hand in hand. Birth dates and death do too.

The notion that there is an anniversary syndrome in which deaths are tied to birthdays or important dates in a person's life has been scientifically studied. The after effects of Post Traumatic Stress events can result in depression or rage linked to the anniversary of any traumatic event such as a death, war, or accident.

This is clearest, perhaps, as the date of death of a loved one approaches. The anniversary of a relative, especially a father or mother, can trigger a Sudden Death (SD), according to research that was presented in March 2008, at the American College of Cardiology’s 57th Annual Scientific Session.

“Sudden death is a major public health problem and is responsible for nearly half of all cardiac deaths,” said Juan Marques, M.D., Central University of Venezuela, and co-investigator of this study. He wrote:

Researchers evaluated a consecutive series of 102 documented sudden death cases of individuals between 37 and 79 years old. Life circumstances that preceded death were investigated. In nearly 70 percent of cases (69 cases), the underlying syndrome was coronary artery disease. In 13 percent of cases (13 cases), SD occurs on the anniversary date of the traumatic event of death of a parent (seven on the anniversary of father’s death, five on the anniversary of mother’s death and one on the anniversary of the death of the mother and father, who died on the same date). Deaths were not related to the loss of any other close family member. Roughly one-third (4 cases) died at a similar age as the family member who died previously....Nearly 80 percent of the patients (10 cases) who died suddenly under the anniversary effect were male. The reason for this is not understood, but may reflect gender differences in response to stressful situations. Source.

Earlier, in 1992, Dr. David P. Phillips, a sociology professor at the University of California in San Diego conducted a study that found that an approaching birthday seems to prolong life in women and precipitate death in men. His study, based on 2,745,149 deaths from natural causes, found that women were more likely to die in the week after their birthdays than in any other week during the year, while men tended to die shortly before their birthdays. It was the first study to show gender differences in so-called anniversary effects: changes in behavior on birthdays, holidays or other personally meaningful occasions.

Birthdays can be either "a deadline or a lifeline," said Phillips. "In our achievement-oriented society, men may find themselves wanting. They don't want to go through another one of these stock-taking periods."

The study was published in the September 1992, Psychosomatic Medicine, the journal of the American Psychosomatic Society, and found 3 percent more deaths than expected among women in the week after a birthday and a slight decline the week before. For men, deaths peaked just before birthdays and showed no rise above normal afterward.

It is true that you can find memorable events that have happened on any date on the calendar, but it is a different matter when the historic incidents are especially significant to the people dying.

Mark Stibich, Ph.D., has this to say about this topic, as it relates to traumatic memories:

There is a commonly held belief that people die more around dates that they associate with loved ones passing or near certain holidays. Some of the statistics prove true – there are more deaths around Christmas (for Westerners) and just after Chinese New Year’s (for Chinese). People seem to be able to time their deaths – extending them slightly to make it to a holiday, birthday or other event.
A recent report in Reuters told of a case in which a woman had a heart attack exactly one week (to the hour) after her father had died. The strangest part is – she was standing at the grave of her sister who had died when she heard the news of her father’s death. Researchers have called this the “anniversary reaction.”
Researchers don’t exactly know what the “anniversary reaction” is or how it might work. What we do know is that thinking positively about the future can add years to your life. So find something to look forward to and be positive about, especially near sad anniversaries. “Anniversary Reaction – Can Memory Trigger Death?”

If this is related to birthdays, where people actually are able to stem the tide of death until they reach their birthdays or important dates, you can see how it interrelates with the anniversary syndrome.