Sadly, Suffer The Little Children

Some sad, weird stories are crossing my desk, about kids, about deaths, about this time of year, and, of course, once again, from the Atlanta area. Maybe there's someone out there who can see some patterns or meaning in all of this horrible news.

First, something seemed to be in the wind about the Summer Solstice, more so than normal, this year. There was a rash of stories, seemingly causing some Satanic smoldering about the dates June 20-25. See  "Satanists & Solstice Slayings." Of course, there was a hint of bizarreness just before the 21st on "Friday the 13th at Waffle House." Earlier, in May, a "Man Robbed A Waffle House With A Pitchfork."

The three Waffle House incidents - the pitchfork robbery at a WH, the killing of an on-duty policeman working as a security guard at a WH, and a WH employee shooting and killing a customer - all happened at Atlanta-area Waffle Houses.

In a strange link to Atlanta and an old name game previously identified here (= Tecumseh), the William Tecumseh Sherman monument (above) at the Grand Army Plaza in New York City was in the news because it is losing its gold covering. Tecumseh also showed up in the news this week with a lightning fire in Tecumseh, Ontario; a horse being killed in a fire in Tecumseh, Oklahoma; and a shooting at the intersection of Gloster and Tecumseh streets in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to name but a few examples.

The Union general who burned Atlanta was named after the great Shawnee prophet Tecumseh.

When another human tragedy struck, late in June, it was no surprise that the Atlanta area was a focus again. A toddler had been found dead, and had apparently been left alone for hours in a hot car. The distraught father blamed himself and faced serious criminal charges.
But there is a bit of mystery here. What was the truth behind the incident?

Cobb County, Georgia, police imply there is more -- much more -- to the story.
"Much has changed about the circumstances leading up to the death of this 22-month-old [Cooper Harris, pictured at top] since it was first reported," Cobb County Police Sgt. Dana Pierce told CNN. He would not elaborate, citing an ongoing investigation, but his words made it clear this was not just another case of a young life left and lost to heat exposure in a hot car.
Shocking details in hot car death case
"I've been in law enforcement for 34 years. What I know about this case shocks my conscience as a police officer, a father and a grandfather," said Pierce.

 

Initially, Justin Ross Harris, 33, (pictured) told Cobb County police that he accidentally left his toddler son in his SUV on Wednesday. According to police, Harris told them he had forgotten to drop the child off at a daycare center, before going to work.
Harris initially told police he realized that he'd left the boy strapped in his car seat as he drove home Wednesday afternoon.
Investigators say patrol officers were in the area of the Akers Mill Square shopping center in the suburban Atlanta county when dispatchers received the calls from witnesses around 4:20 p.m.
"He kept saying, 'What have I done? What have I done?'" Dale Hamilton told CNN affiliate WSB-TV.
"Within moments of the first responders getting to the scene and doing their job and questions began to be asked about the moments that led up to their arrival at the scene, some of those answers were not making sense to the first responders," Pierce of Cobb County Police said.
On Thursday, Harris pleaded not guilty to felony murder and cruelty to children charges. He's being held without bond at the Cobb County Jail.
CNN spoke with the child's mother, Leanna Harris, on Friday. Harris says she's been advised not to discuss the case with the media.
"We have been in communication with the mother throughout the investigation. At this time, I'm not at liberty to discuss her involvement. That's a part of the case our detectives are working on," Pierce said....
According to the arrest warrant, the temperature reached 88 degrees in the area on Wednesday. Police said medical personnel believed the child had been in the SUV since 9 a.m., as Harris said.
But Pierce told CNN on Friday, "I cannot confirm that the child, as originally reported, was in the car at 9 a.m." ~ CNN

What's worse, there was another such death.

The [Atlanta-area] toddler's death was the second this week of a child in a hot car. On Monday, a 9-month-old girl died in Rockledge, Fla., after her father forgot to drop her off at her grandmother's house, leaving her in the back seat of his pickup truck for several hours as he worked at his job as a telephone solicitor for the Fraternal Order of Police.
As of Thursday, no charges had been filed against Steven Lillie, 31, of Cocoa, Fla. Rockledge Police say they still are investigating the death and allowing Lillie and his girlfriend, the child's mother, to grieve the loss.
"She's been in the car for hours, and I absolutely forgot about her," Lillie said during a 9-1-1 call Monday to police dispatchers. "She's not alive." USA Today.

Thus far, in 2014, the following incidents have occurred:

Incident #	Date	Location	Temperature	Name	Age
	June
13*	06/18/14	Cobb County, GA	91°	Cooper Harris	22 mo
12*	06/16/14	Rockledge, FL	91°	Anna  Lillie	9 mo
11*	06/12/14	Ardmore, OK	84°	Mason Ryan Wood	2 mo
10	06/10/14	Flint, TX	88°	Bella Lindstrom	4 yr
9	06/08/14	Sarasota, FL	85°	Alejandra Hernandez	2 yr
8	06/04/14	Dolgeville, NY	73°	Sophia Lea Marie Lyon	15 mo
	May
7	05/25/14	Florence, SC	86°	Jeremiah A. Kennedy	13 mo
6	05/25/14	Princeton, IL	84°	Logan Jacobs	5 yr
5	05/12/14	Clarkston, GA	87°	Julius Meh	2 yr
4	05/08/14	Hartsville, SC	93°	Sophia Goyeneche	13 mo
	April
3	04/29/14	Bakersfield, CA	87°	Fernando Velasquez	5 yr
2*	04/22/14	North Richland Hills, TX	84°	Aurora Hollingsworth	17 mo
1	04/16/14	San Jose, CA	80°	Giovanni Alonzo Hernandez	9 mo

For 2013, see the list here.

"Suffer the little children" seemed a fitting headline for this posting.

But Jesus said, "Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." ~ Matthew 19:14, English Revised Version, The Bible

Just to clarify, as pointed out by RC in a comment to me, the use of the word "suffer" in the biblical sense means to "allow" as in "allow the children to come to me."

What is the paradox is how the meaning has changed for people from Stephen King (see at bottom) to the self-styled Satanists.

Meanwhile, the BeforeItNews folks wanted to turn everyone's attention to Denver, Colorado, over the Solstice weekend. There was talk of the sacrifice of a human child there, due to the Summer Solstice.

It was also pointed out that around the time of the Summer Solstice in 2013, in Midwest City, Oklahoma,

a toddler was held hostage [on June 17th] at Walmart, the suspected criminal claimed he was part of a Satanic cult.
News9 reported Sammie Lamont Wallace grabbed the two-year-old child at knifepoint and began speaking about the Illuminati and a satanic cult. Police said they began to research the things Wallace said, and found out that the day of the incident linked to a day of human sacrifice.
Police shot and killed Wallace after he began to make attempts on the girl's life. According to the police report they found religious writings in a notebook to validate his actions. See a report that further explains the story here.

###

A school shooting, Stephen King, and Miss Sibley.

"Suffer the Little Children" is a February 1972 short story by Stephen King. 

As King developed the tale, it was one about a school shooting long before the modern era of such events.

The plot centers on a frightened third grade teacher, Miss Emily Sidley, who brings her deceased brother's gun to school. There she takes twelve of her students to a room and shoots each one dead. Soon, she is interrupted by another teacher, and stops before she can kill another student.

Miss Sidley is sent to a mental hospital after the murders, and eventually takes her own life.

In 1993, King wrote that the story had "no redeeming social merit whatever."

Later, Stephen King discussed the role of his book Rage (which also contains a school shooting) after the school shootings by Barry Loukaitis of February 2, 1996, in Moses Lake, Washington. Eventually King apologized for writing the book, saying he penned it during a troubling period in his life. He said he wished it never had been published. Finally in 1999, after Columbine, King told his publisher to pull it from publication and took it out-of-print. He told the Today Show’s Katie Couric: “I took a look at Rage and said to myself, if this book is acting as any sort of accelerate, if it’s having any effect on any of these kids at all, I don’t want anything to do with it, regardless of what may be the moral and legal rights and wrongs. Even talking about it makes me nervous.”

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H/T to Sibyl Hunter for some hints.
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For a followup, see Suffer The Little Children, Part II. 

Peter Pan, Lost Boys, Bunny Men, and Goat Men

After reading "Peter Pan, Graverobbing, and Lost Boys" and "The Peter Pan/Hook Deaths," the following thoughts were shared by a correspondent:

I couldn't help wondering if there could be any connection between these
cases of children found mysteriously or suspiciously hanged from hooks, and
a couple of American "urban legends" or "campfire tales" of psychopathic or
demonic assailants who allegedly hang teen-agers from bridges in wooded
areas. One cluster of such tales concerns a railroad trestle in Fairfax
County, northern Virginia, called "Bunny Man's Bridge," and attributes the
alleged hangings to the "Bunny Man," supposedly a psychopathic killer
(either an escapee from an institution for the criminally insane, or a
one-time teen-age boy gone berserk) wearing an Easter Bunny costume. The
other cluster involves a highway overpass over Sweet Hollow Road in
Melville, eastern Long Island, and blames the alleged hangings on the
spirits of supposed escapees from a burnt-down local asylum. In neither
the "Bunny Man Bridge" nor the Sweet Hollow Road cases are there any actual police records of people actually ever been found hanged from the bridges in question nor of unsolved missing teen-ager reports from the respective local areas. Likewise, neither in the Sweet Hollow Road nor the "Bunny Man Bridge" cases is there any historical record of any burned-down or closed-down institution in the area such as those from which the alleged
perpetrators supposedly escaped. I've always wondered myself if there could
be some sort of "copycat" historical connection between the "Bunny Man
Bridge" and Sweet Hollow Road legends. ~ T. Peter Park.

The links do not end there.

I have written of the Bunny Man often in books and blogs (e.g. "Donnie Darko and Bunny Men"). As Wikipedia correctly summarizes, "Loren Coleman,...in the book Weird Virginia, which has a section on the Bunny Man, sees a direct association between the legend of Bunny Man and that of the Goatman of nearby Maryland." (For more on Goatman and the illustrations above, see here.)

Washington D.C. bound Amtrak train crosses over Colchester Road in Fairfax Station, Virginia at Colchester Overpass, also known as the "Bunnyman Bridge." Taken March 22, 2012. Credit: Kohlchester. Used by Wikipedia Creative Commons license.

Peter Pan, Graverobbing, and Lost Boys

Captain Hook. Graves. Death.

Under a flagstone at Durham Cathedral, Durham, England, earlier in September 2013, a mystery bottle containing a faded piece of paper was discovered with the names of three gravediggers, along with the message: "This grave was opened on Sunday May 11th 1913."

The Daily Mail noted, in part:

Stonemason Steve Mann unearthed the remarkably well-preserved bottle while re-laying the flagstones near the tomb of the Venerable Bede in the cathedral's 12 century Galilee Chapel on Tuesday [September 24, 2013].
The only tantalizing clue to what lay within was the words Globe Theatre, visible on the paper's letterhead....
A theatre advert - believed to be the closest piece of paper to hand when the note was made - was for a production of English dance and folk songs at the Globe Theatre, in London, Shaftesbury Avenue.
On the back were the names Mr W Wraybole, Mr W Carter, Mr G Yeoman. They were bracketed with the word Grave and what appears to be a capital D and included a stonemason mark - along with the enigmatic message.
Mr Emery said: 'The interesting thing to the advert is that it refers to the sole lessee of the Globe Theatre as Charles Frohman, the American impresario of the day. Frohman produced JM Barries' Peter Pan.'

Who were Misters Wraybole, Carter, and Yeoman?

What will be discovered about these three in the coming months? Were lost boys in the graves? Was someone looking for missing children?

The graverobbing actually links to the Globe Theatre-Charles Frohman-JM Barries-Peter Pan, and the concept of Puer aeternus. The phrase is Latin for eternal boy, used in mythology to designate a child-god who is forever young; psychologically it is an older man whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level. The puer typically leads a provisional life, due to the fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be possible to escape. He covets independence and freedom, chafes at boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction intolerable. The concept is very Jungian.

In an intriguing coincidence, one of the more significance books on Peter Pan at the end of the 20th century is Now or Neverland: Peter Pan and the Myth of Eternal Youth by Ann Yeoman (No. 82 in the series Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts).

Ann Yeoman, former Dean of Students at New College, University of Toronto, as mentioned on her academic biography, was born and raised in Devon, England, on a farm adjoining cliffs that overlooked the English Channel, a landscape which she says inspired her lifelong interest in the alternative worlds of the literary fantastic.

She decided to complete the training program in Analytical Psychology at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. She graduated as a Jungian Analyst in 1997. Her Zurich thesis was on a theme and interest that had been prevalent throughout her life: the genesis of fantasy figures and the symbolic role they play in our everyday lives. Ann turned her thesis into a book entitled Now or Neverland: Peter Pan and the Myth of Eternal Youth, published by Inner City Books (1998), which offers a psychological perspective on that popular literary icon, Peter Pan.

Until recently, Dr. Yeoman was the Director of New College's Program in Paradigms and Archetypes, and teaches the Jungian Studies courses offered in the program. She recently moved to her homeland in South Devon, England, where she continues her private practice as an analytical psychologist (Jungian Analyst).

Now Or Neverland offers a comprehensive overview of the eternal boy syndrome from its roots in mythology to present day psychological interpretations, including a detailed study of its twentieth century depiction by J.M. Barrie in his famous play and novel. 

Peter Pan. Lost Boys. Captain Hook. Graves. Death. Graverobbing. Missing Children.

Theo Paijmans shared the following in a past comment:

As for the Peter Pan connection, study the symbolism of Peter Pan as 'the boy who wouldn't grow up' and his gang of 'lost boys' who were 'forgotten by their parents'. The hooks were these tragic children were found hanging from, a reference to Peter Pan's arch nemesis Captain Hook.
J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, lets him say this about death: "To die will be an awfully big adventure". One author, Kevin Orlin Johnson, has argued that the Pan stories are in the German-English tradition of the Totenkindergeschichte, the "tales of dead children".
And then there is Peter Pan's mythical realm Neverland, the name also given to Michael Jackson's ranch which, as some allege, is a place where one of the darkest kinds of violence against children was been performed.

As we explored before (see The Peter Pan/Hook Deaths), something strange is going on, and it has been for decades.