Full Dark, No Stars is an anthology consisting of four novellas, each one dealing with the theme of retribution.  1922 is the first of the bunch.  It is set in Hemingford Home, Nebraska, and it follows a father and a son who commit a terrible crime motivated by greed and pride.  Their crime does not go unavenged–it is a Stephen King story after all–and things go from dark to pitch black really quick.  I’m thinking 1922 is my favorite story of the bunch, although they’re all good.

Next up in King’s collection of horrors is Big Driver, where a mystery writer gets a great deal more than she bargained for after a speaking engagement when she runs into the titular Big Driver on a lonely stretch of road.  If 1922 was brutal, Big Driver takes things to another level; I found some parts difficult to read, fair warning.

The next story, Fair Extension, was the weakest of the bunch in my mind.  A man with cancer comes across a mysterious stand near an airport, where a strange man sells “extensions”.  It’s less gory than the preceding novellas, but in its own way it is still rather gruesome.  I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say that jealousy can get the better of anyone, even the best of men.

The final story in the collection was A Good Marriage.  A house wife learns the hard way that sometimes, monsters can lurk behind even the kindest of faces.  That, and that you can never truly know the inner workings of another person, no matter how close you become to them.  I should add that this story is very much inspired by true events; King himself says as much during the epilogue.

King was very much in the Bachman state of mind when he wrote Full Dark, No Stars; that is to say, normally King’s works end on something of an up note, but not here.  The title is apt as these are four of the darkest pieces King has published under his own name.  They’re true as well, as true as fiction can get at any rate.  If you want to see the master of horror at his best, give Full Dark, No Stars a look.  You won’t regret it.

Andrew Kincaid writes horror, blogs, and watches way too many scary movies..  He’s making the world a stranger place, one story at a time.  Get in touch with him on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his debut horror anthology ON DARK PATHS, available on Kindle!

The Ghost of Oyuki, an image depicting a traditional Yurei.

Several months ago, I did a post about Aokigahara, Japan’s suicide capital and a purportedly haunted forest.  It is widely believed that the forest is haunted by Yurei, which are essentially Japan’s version of ghosts.  These differ from the traditional Western style ghosts.  On our side of the ocean, ghosts are ephemeral things that can only interact with the physical world with great difficulty.  They knock and creak and moan, but they’re generally harmless; in fact, they’re usually little more than annoying, at least according to the lore.  Their goal is usually to attempt some sort of communication with the living, in order to fulfill some sort of unfinished business, after which they can pass on to the other side.  Some are more malevolent, intending to scare folks away from their haunts or just to generally be pains in the butt.  In general, they’re said to be tied to our world by strong emotions, often negative.

Yurei, on the other hand, are entirely different beasts.  There are some similarities, of course: both are tied to the world by strong emotions, and both seek to interact with humans.  Other than that though, there are few similarities.  For one, Yurei are often depicted the same way: they’re women dressed in white with long black hair.  Yurei are predominately believed to be women, because the Japanese believe that women experience deeper, stronger emotions than men and thus are more likely to become Yurei.

The differences don’t end there, but in order to understand the Yurei fully we must understand traditional Japanese beliefs about the afterlife.  Shinto doesn’t have heaven or hell the same way the West does.  When a person dies, their soul leaves the body and enters a kind of purgatory.  When the proper funeral rites are performed, the soul can go to the ancestors and thus become a protective spirit.  However, if the proper rites are not performed, or if the person dies by suicide or murder, their soul may become a Yurei.

That isn’t too different from the Western conception of ghosts, nor the conception of ghosts the world over.  There is a prevalent belief the world over that if people are not laid to rest properly they will somehow haunt the living.  Yurei, however, are more corporeal than their Western counterparts.  They are not see through, although in their traditional depiction they are shown hovering over the ground, with only their hands and face visible.  Yurei also, possibly due to their corporeal nature, have no problem interacting with the physical world, much to their victim’s dismay.

You see, Yurei are incredibly dangerous.  They are said to seek vengeance against those who wronged them in life, and little can be done to stop them.  The Yurei will only disappear when their desire for vengeance is sated, either by the Yurei itself or by its family members.  In some cases, the Yurei may haunt a lover until its passion is fulfilled (not sure what that means, but to me that sounds pretty ominous).  Sometimes a Shinto or Buddhist priest may be able to exorcise the Yurei, but more often than not the spirits are unstoppable until they fulfill their desires.

The worst kind of Yurei become a curse.  Their desire for vengeance is so strong that even destroying the original object of their fury cannot sate it.  They will destroy anyone who enters their territory–Yurei are typically, but not always, bound to a specific site–and will do so until exorcised or otherwise removed, a dicey proposition at best.

American has come to know Yurei in recent years through movies.  The Grudge, The Ring, and Silent Hill all feature Yurei style ghosts.  While these depictions aren’t always accurate in terms of the traditional folklore, they’ve definitely made waves in American horror.  Like it or not, it seems the Yurei are here to stay in American horror.

Have you seen The Grudge, The Ring, or Silent Hill?  What do you think of the Yurei or ghosts in general (keep it civil, please)?

Andrew Kincaid writes horror, blogs, and watches way too many scary movies..  He’s making the world a stranger place, one story at a time.  Get in touch with him on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his debut horror anthology ON DARK PATHS, available on Kindle!

I have neither of these things…hence the crappy Word Art image, haha

Well, I am all graduated.  I think.  My degree hasn’t come in yet, but so far as I know everything is in order and my undergraduate career is over.  Now the job hunt begins!  I’ve already sent out my resume to one potential employer; the position was for general office work, not exactly teaching but it would do in the short run.  I’m also beginning the process of being certified to teach.  Alternative certification in Ohio requires a bachelor’s degree in a given subject, pedagogical training (either 6 credit hours from an accredited institution or an online institute that requires field training; I’ll be doing the former), and successful passage of the Praxis II content exam.

That being said, I’m not entirely sure I want to teach anymore.  I have all this training in biology, and certainly if I didn’t teach it would basically go to waste.  Lab work isn’t exactly something I could do very well as I have tremors in my hands and involuntary muscle contractions (don’t worry, I’m getting them checked out; I doubt it’s much of anything but better safe than sorry), which made lab work during school…interesting.   My lab partners wouldn’t let me touch the experiments for fear that I would screw them up, haha.  I mostly took a managerial role, as it were, making certain the experiments were done properly, etc.

That particular decision might have been made for me, since a quick survey shows no teaching jobs available locally.  At least, no teaching jobs I could do–the listings I’ve seen were for special education interventionists and college professors.  It’s a shame I don’t have a Ph.D–I could have a job in Zane State in no time!

Really, it doesn’t matter what I do in terms of day job, for two reasons.  One: my vocation is not the job I find myself in.  Rather, my vocation is what I bring to the job; it’s a matter of mind set.  The second and more important reason is that I’ve found what I want to do.  I want to write for a living.  Right now, that isn’t feasible.  I only have two books available, and the income from them is nowhere near enough to sustain myself on.  This is a volume game though: both volume of sales and volume of output.  That is to say, you can’t expect to make a living off one book, or even two.  You have to build up a list of books for folks to pick from, and hopefully if they like your content they’ll become repeat customers.  The key is to write and write well–you don’t want to just shove out a bunch of crap, after all.

Speaking of, a bit of shameless self promotion.  I recently released my book, On Dark Paths, on Nook and Smashwords.  It was originally available on Kindle, but I decided to put it on other platforms when folks who didn’t own Kindles told me they wanted to read my book.  I’m in the process of proofing Strange World before I put it on those platforms as well.  I have a lot of new stuff in the works, including a fantasy novel that is nearly completed, and several horror novels and novellas.  Stay tuned!

What projects do you have in the works?  Have you found your “dream job”?

Andrew Kincaid writes horror, blogs, and watches way too many scary movies..  He’s making the world a stranger place, one story at a time.  Get in touch with him on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his debut horror anthology ON DARK PATHS, available on Kindle!

Not just a Kindle book anymore!

I debated for awhile, but I finally decided to put my first horror anthology, On Dark Paths, up on Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.  I’ve had several people tell me that they wanted to read my book, but couldn’t because they didn’t own a Kindle.  So, now the book is available to everyone!

…well, everyone except people who don’t have an e-reader, that is.  I’m working on it =P

My next project is to get my second book up on both these platforms as well.  Now that I know what B&N wants in terms of formatting it should be a relatively simple thing to get Strange World up and running, although I do want to pick through and proofread the book one more time because I have obsessive tendencies.

As for a third book…I couldn’t tell you when that will be out.  I’m nearing the end of the first draft of my fantasy novel, the first of a trilogy (maybe).  I thought I had a good start on a third horror anthology, but it turned out I only have three usable stories, which means I’ll have to come up with about two or three more to add to the bunch before I feel comfortable even thinking about publishing (luckily, my creative constipation toward the short story/novella format seems to have passed, since I have at least two or three ideas that may work).  Finally, I have a horror novel I want to write–a ghost story–which is worked out in a broad sense but that needs to be outlined and all that good stuff before I can start it.  So many projects, and too little time and energy to do them!

Anywho.  For now you can entertain yourself (I hope) with my first collection of stories.  Here’s the description:

Now and then a person brushes up against something they can’t explain, something so far outside the norm that in a sane world it ought not exist.  Enclosed here are thirteen stories about this unholy interaction of the Mundane and the world Beyond:

- A mysterious stranger and horrible sounds from the night give the briefest glimpse into the horrors “Beyond the Veil”

- Is it merely a dream?  Or is it a horrific glimpse into Outer Darkness?   “Plop!”

- A mysterious video wends its way through the digital world, leaving nothing but madness and destruction in its wake in “…And the Truth Shall Make You Free ”

“Where the Darkest of Dark Things Dwell” – Sometimes it isn’t the monster outside that gets you.  Sometimes it’s the one inside.

- A modern day Frankenstein learns the price of hubris in “Murphy’s Law“

- Nothing can save you now.  You’ve been bitten… in “The Bite”

-A sleepy little mining town conceals a horrible truth beneath its feet in  “Benton’s Station”

-The nighttime fancies of childhood sometimes turn out to be all too real in “It Came At Midnight”

- A paranormal enthusiast gets much more than he bargained for in “Death At a Train Crossing”

- It lurks in the woods.  Watching.  Waiting.  What is it? No one knows. “The Thing That Smiles”

- An eccentric author receives a pair of strange visitors one rainy night in “Black Eyed Kids”

- A mysterious box reveals Everything…but for a price…  in “The Spirit Box”

- A journalist learns the truth about a devastating plague that has swept the world in “Pandemic Hysteria”

There you have it.  Thirteen stories to chill the blood.  Thirteen stories that lay bare the strange reaches of our world and the dark ways beyond it.

Won’t you walk with me On Dark Paths?

Now available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

Don’t have a Kindle? Never fear!  You can download Kindle for PC free, or you can download the Kindle app for your smartphone or Ipad.

Thanks and I hope you enjoy.

“Love Thy Neighbor”

Netflix has broadened my horizons in terms of horror movies.  It has put hundreds, if not thousands, of them at my fingertips for only about $8 a month.  As a result, I’ve watched many movies I wouldn’t normally watch (and my trips to the local video store have trickled to a stop, something I feel kind of bad about since I know the people who own it).  Red State is one such movie; my friends and I watched it on a lark a few months ago, and last night I decided to give it a re-watch.

Red State is sort of a hybrid movie; not quite horror, but not fully a thriller, with hints of an action movie sprinkled throughout.  The story follows three horny teenagers looking to get their rocks off in small town America.  The three go out one night in pursuit of a fling with a woman one of them met on a casual sex site online.  What should have been a stupid teenage adventure turns horrific when the woman, who turns out to be a middle aged member of an extreme fundamentalist church called Five Points Trinity Church, drugs the boys.  The three are taken to the church’s compound, where the bulk of the movie unfolds.

The social commentary aspect of Red State is not subtle in the least.  The head of Five Points Trinity Church is Abin Cooper, an angry and charismatic fire and brimstone preacher who rails against the evils of modern America, especially homosexuality.  His flock seemed to mostly consist of his family, including several young grandchildren.  His flock protest military funerals, and in the beginning of the film they’re seen protesting the funeral of a homosexual teen who was recently murdered.

All of this may sound familiar if you’ve kept track of the news in the last ten years or so; Five Points Trinity is a pretty unsubtle nod to the real life crazies in Westboro Baptist, headed by Fred Phelps.  The Five Pointers go one step further, though; while Phelps and his ilk call for God to smite America for its sins, Abin Cooper’s group takes divine justice into their own hands.  The recently murdered teen?  You guessed it; Cooper’s group was responsible.  Another murder of a homosexual man is graphically depicted soon after the teenagers are captured and let me tell ya, it’s disturbing (although, during the commission of the crime there is a fairly humorous moment when one church member cautions another not to get any of the man’s saliva on him else he catch “the gay”.  I can’t help but feel that some people genuinely believe that).

After the murder, Red State takes a turn toward action movie territory, when the ATF performs a (botched) raid on The Five Pointer’s compound, after one member shot a sheriff’s deputy.  This is were the movie becomes weird(er), as John Goodman of all people shows up as an ATF agent heading up the raid.  While the church is despicable, the government doesn’t come off much better as the situation quickly devolves into something similar to Waco.  There is a great twist toward the end of the movie; I won’t give it away, but I would say it’s certainly ironic and I remember laughing later when everything came out.

Red State was, at least in my opinion, a good movie.  It certainly had its flaws; I almost would have rather seen the movie stick with the teens attempting to escape the church, more like a The Texas Chainsaw Massacre type scenario, rather than turn to the action flick that it became.  Be that as it may, the movie ends better than the original planned ending, where the honest to God, Biblical Armageddon began.  I think the movie would have been better served had it been a straight horror flick, as I said in TCM style.  But that wasn’t the director’s vision, and you have to respect what Kevin Smith managed to accomplish, despite the movie’s obvious problems.

Andrew Kincaid writes horror, blogs, and watches way too many scary movies..  He’s making the world a stranger place, one story at a time.  Get in touch with him on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his debut horror anthology ON DARK PATHS, available on Kindle!

It goes without saying that the legend of Bloody Mary has spawned innumerable retellings as horror movies, most of them awful.

Ah…who hasn’t heard the legend of Bloody Mary?  Or, rather, a legend of Bloody Mary as there are several variants of the story and the ritual alleged to summon the vengeful spirit.  The most common variant holds that Mary Worth lived in Puritan New England, where she had the nerve to become pregnant out of wedlock and, gasp, not be ashamed of it.  She also continued to indulge in her lustful ways throughout her pregnancy.  The Puritan mind, apparently, could not fathom that one of their number could be so sinful and they thus declared her a witch (funny that her lovers did not receive such a sanction.  The double standard goes way, way back).

When the baby was born, the terrified villagers took it from its mother’s arms and burned it alive before tying Mary Worth to a stake and scratching her face with branches.  One woman held a hand mirror in front of poor Mary Worth’s face, taunting that her once legendary beauty was now gone.  Finally, the villagers lit the stacked branches.  When the flames began to lick at Mary Worth’s legs, she screamed a curse at her tormentors.  When Worth died, the hand mirror shattered, cutting the taunting woman’s hand.  Later, the woman was found dead due to illness.  Several other villagers who participated in Mary Worth’s murder met similar fates, all found dead near shattered mirrors.

Now, the story goes that if you chant Bloody Mary anywhere from five to fourteen times in front of a mirror in a dark room, the spirit of Mary Worth will appear and do one of several things.  If she feels you are taunting her, she’ll claw your eyes out or drag you into the mirror, never to be seen again.  Other versions of the story say that Mary will allow you to talk to a dead relative if you ask nicely.

A wood cut depicting a witch burning. I don’t know about you guys, but pictures like this make me glad I live in the Twenty-First Century.

The story of Mary Worth’s execution is dubious at best.  The smoking gun, in my mind, is the method of execution.  Burning a witch was outlawed in England by the time the Puritans came to North America.  Generally, the Puritans emulated English common law so they would not have burned a person accused of witchcraft.  Instead, the prescribed method of execution for a witch was hanging.  Afterward, the body would either be burnt or buried in a shallow grave.  As evidence, I cite the Salem Witch Trials; no accused witch was burned at the stake during those proceedings.  In fact, all the executions that resulted save for one were hangings; the lone non-hanging saw a man be crushed to death under heavy rocks when he would not confess to being a witch.

That’s the nature of the beast when it comes to urban legends; at best, they’re half remembered fragments of tales passed through the collective grape vine over decades, if not centuries.  Naturally, the facts are going to be a bit skewed, if there was any factual basis to start with.

While the historical basis for this legend might be a bit murky, one of the phenomena underlying it is indeed based in fact.  There is a good reason why the ritual to summon Bloody Mary’s vengeful spirit has to be performed in front of a mirror under low light conditions; those are the best conditions to induce a phenomenon called Troxler’s Fading (aka the Troxler Effect).

You see, your brain is pretty busy, what with all the various stimuli bombarding it at any given moment.  So, now and then it will take a shortcut.  Notice how you generally don’t feel your clothes against your skin (until some blogger comes and calls your attention to it, at any rate).  The stimulus doesn’t vary, so your brain feels pretty safe in ignoring it.

A similar thing occurs with your vision.  If you stare at a fixed point for about twenty seconds or so, your peripheral vision essentially shuts off and your brain begins filling in details.  A perfect example is the picture to the right: stare at the red dot for about twenty seconds and the blue circle will disappear.

Scientists believe something similar is happening when you stare at a mirror in a darkened room.  However, since there is no fixed point of reference, the Troxler Effect is incomplete; only parts of your face fade out.  Your brain will fill in these faded spots with about anything.  For example, sometimes an eye will appear on your forehead or a nose where an eye ought to be.

In studies, volunteers asked to stare at a mirror under low light conditions for ten minutes all saw odd things.  The bulk saw monstrous or inhuman faces, many saw their own faces deformed, and a smaller minority saw faces of dead relatives or archetypal faces such as an old woman or a child.

It’s interesting that every volunteer saw something.  It’s easy to see how the legend of Bloody Mary took off then; groups of sugar-addled preteens piled into dark rooms, all aware of the story and all feeding off each others nervous energy would be bound to see what they were looking for.

So, what we have here is an urban legend with some basis in human sensory perception.  Being a science major, when I discovered the Troxler Effect I had to try it.  So, last night, I made four attempts with four separate results.  Now I must qualify that I did not stare at myself for ten minutes like the folks in the study did; instead, I only looked for maybe a minute each time.  Also, I used my cell phone back-light to achieve the needed low light effect since I didn’t have any candles handy.

When I did the experiment in full light, it appeared as if my face floated loose from my head.  In the first of my three low light trials, my face deformed–my nose became huge and lumpy, like a potato.  In the second trial, my face took on the appearance of a gargoyle and in the third I looked like Captain Howdy from The Exorcist.

Strange indeed.  Is it any wonder then why so many folks are afraid of what they see in the mirror, then?  Look too long, and you just might see something monstrous staring back at you!

Have you tried the Bloody Mary ritual?  What did you see if you did? 

Andrew Kincaid writes horror, blogs, and watches way too many scary movies..  He’s making the world a stranger place, one story at a time.  Get in touch with him on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his debut horror anthology ON DARK PATHS, available on Kindle!

This is what hate looks like.

In last week’s entry, we discussed how the word “theory” does not mean what most people think it means.  The poor word has been so abused that hardly anyone knows its true meaning these days.  Today though we will be examining a different type of word abuse.  Love and hate are words with which we are all familiar, that most of us probably use every day.  Their definitions are intuitive – “love” denotes a great affection for something/someone while “hate” denotes the opposite.

The problem is not one of definition; although, I will admit that love is a bit hard to define – I’ll leave that to the philosophers and go with the general, everyday usage for the purposes of this post.  Rather, these words are abused by the context in which they are used.  “Love” and “hate” are the most powerful words in the English language, denoting two polar extremes of the human experience.  Despite this, they’re often bandied about in daily speech.  It may be surprising, if you look for it, how often in a day do you hear phrases like this:  “I love pizza!”, “Ugh…I hate that guy!”, “I love [insert celebrity's name here]” or “I hate [insert band name here]“.  Those are just a few examples, but you get the gist.

Now, you might be wondering at this point what the problem is.  Certainly, people can have strong feelings about bands, food, celebrities, sports teams, or any number of things.  These strong feelings may even border on love and hate, depending on the person.  Therefore, it isn’t necessarily wrong, in the sense of the definition of the words, to use “love” or “hate” in the everyday sense.  However, should such powerful words as “love” and “hate” be thrown about so casually?  Does a strong dislike of a sports team warrant the word “hate”?  Likewise, does a strong affinity for a brand of soda warrant the use of the word “love”?

I think not.  I don’t see how a person can “love” a pizza, or a video game, or a sports team.  Love in a basic sense is a bond of affection between people – I don’t see how a slab of dough, cheese, sauce, and meat can exactly return whatever amount of affection you feel for it.  I suppose you could love pizza, but that love is pretty one-sided.  The same goes for sports teams, video games, and any number of other things people profess to “love” on a daily basis.

Love does not always have to be reciprocated – indeed oftentimes it will not be – but I should think that we should limit the use of the word to situations where reciprocation is at least possible.  You can love a cat or a dog, and they’ll at least show some affection back to you.  Much ink has been spilled writing about the love between spouses and lovers, and for good reason as that is one of the strongest bonds a person can experience in their life.  The love between friends is oft overlooked but no less strong than love of the romantic variety, and the love of family is (hopefully) some of the first experiences a person has with the emotion.

In short, a word as weighty as “love” should not be thrown around casually.  You may really enjoy pizza, so simply say “I enjoy pizza” and leave the word love for the grander things it was meant for.

As it is with “love”, so it is with “hate”.  I wish the word “hate” would never have to be used again, but alas we live in an imperfect world and hatred will be with our species until it goes extinct.  That is why the word should not be diluted.  It is an ugly word, and it should remain ugly.  A person can strongly dislike someone or something, but they ought to think long and hard before they toss out the word “hate”.  Hatred is the strongest negative emotion a person can feel toward another person.  It is the vocabulary equivalent of a sledgehammer in terms of its impact; yet, it is often used to describe a situation that amounts to a minor inconvenience.  Who hasn’t said “I hate telemarketers!” when they call just as dinner begins or “I hate filling up!” when gas prices leap a quarter in a day?  That’s the equivalent of using the before mentioned sledge when what you really needed was a tack hammer!

To close, love and hate are powerful words that are all too often used inappropriately.  Certainly their definition does not preclude them from being used as they have come to be used in daily speech, but rather it is the weight of their meaning and impact that should give a person pause before they say “I really love that dress!” or “I hate Macs!”.  Just as you would not use an ICBM to swat a fly, you should not use words as strong as “love” and “hate” to describe mundane likes and dislikes.  There are more appropriate words to use – save “love” for the bond between friends, families, and lovers, and “hate” for naming the ugliness that lurks within the dark hearts of humans (and hopefully for nothing else!)

Are there any words you feel are being abused?  What do you think of today’s post?  I enjoy hearing from you guys, so comment away!

Andrew Kincaid writes horror, blogs, and watches way too many scary movies..  He’s making the world a stranger place, one story at a time.  Get in touch with him on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his debut horror anthology ON DARK PATHS, available on Kindle!

Josef Stalin in 1945. Despite his awesome ‘stache, the man was a maniacal, mass murdering dicator and generally not a pleasant person to be around.

Josef Stalin was dictator of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953 (that is a gross oversimplification, but let’s go with that because I don’t have the space or the inclination to illustrate Communist era politics in this post =P), and all around one of the most despicable human beings to exist in all of history.  His policies before, during, and after World War II resulted in the gruesome deaths of millions upon millions of people in a variety of gruesome ways.  People were worked to death, starved to death, shot, and detained in inhumane conditions among other things.  Put short, Stalin’s brutality and madness were on par with that other great villain of history, Adolf Hitler.

And like Hitler, many stories of dubious veracity about Stalin float through the popular consciousness.  Possibly the most insane is that of Stalin’s human-ape hybrids.  The story goes that Stalin desired a race of super humans both to rebuild the Red Army, which had been bruised and battered in the series of civil wars that preceded the rise of Communism in what would become the Soviet Union, and to implement his Five Year Plans, economic policies designed to catapult Russia and its fellow Socialist Republics into the modern era by converting their economies from mainly agrarian to economies focused on heavy industry.  Stalin was allegedly quoted as saying: “I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat.”

To further these ends, Stalin recruited the famed Russian scientist Ilya Ivanov.  Ivanov was famous for his work as a horse breeder under the Tsars.  His use of artificial insemination as a method for increasing the number of horses bred in Russian stables by about twenty times, no small feat in a society that depended on animal power for transportation, food production, and industrial purposes.  Spurred on by his successes with horses, Ivanov went on to perform experiments in hybridization, crossing, among other things, zebras with donkeys and guinea pigs with rabbits.

Stalin’s super soldiers would come as a result of hybridization between humans and other apes, specifically chimps which are our closest living relatives. If it sounds crazy, well, it is.  Scientists today aren’t even certain if such a coupling could occur – it certainly couldn’t by natural means, but even using techniques such as artificial insemination success would be unlikely.  In modern times, these sorts of experiments would never occur due to ethical considerations.

Half of a super soldier, apparently?

So, it should be no surprise that Ivanov’s experiments failed miserably, The first attempts at human/ape hybridization were performed in Africa, as Russia had a distinct lack of chimpanzees (or any other great apes for that matter, other than humans).  Ivanov attempted to inseminate three female chimps using human sperm with no success, due in part to his small sample size and probably also due to the relatively primitive techniques available in the mid to late 1920′s.

After this failure, Ivanov returned to Russia with three male chimps, with the intentions of using their sperm to inseminate a human female.  Volunteers were understandably hard to come by, and only one woman only known as “G” did.  However, before the experiment could be performed all of the chimps wound up dying of various causes and Ivanov himself fell victim to the whims of Soviet politics.  “Western” science fell out of vogue, and Ivanov was charged as an enemy of the state due to his research.  He was exiled to Kazakhstan for five years, where he died in 1932. (Editor’s note: the chimps did make it to Russia, but were not used in the experiment.  Apparently Ivanov wanted to use an Orangutan to attempt to cross it with a human.  That’s even less likely to work, as they are our most distant relatives among the Great Apes, sharing about 96% of genes in common with humans).

Crazy as it sounds, some parts of this story are true.  Ivanov did indeed try to hybridize apes and humans, and his work did receive support from the Soviet authorities.  However, Stalin did not commission the study nor is there any evidence that he knew about it.  His alleged quotes on the matter are so much bunk, more the results of fanciful thinking than anything else.  The original source for the story, near as I can tell, is this article.  It cites no sources, other than “declassified documents”.

I first heard this story on an episode of MonsterQuest on The History Channel.  At the time I didn’t think much of it, given that MonsterQuest is not a very reliable source for information and that The History Channel has become, in recent years, more about pseudoscience and conspiracy than history.  So when, for no reason in particular, the notion for this post came to me I decided to do a bit of sleuthing.  It was no big surprise to find out that there was more to the story than there appeared.  It goes to show – you can’t always believe what you see or hear, especially where maniacal dictators are concerned.

Andrew Kincaid writes horror, blogs, and watches way too many scary movies..  He’s making the world a stranger place, one story at a time.  Get in touch with him on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his debut horror anthology ON DARK PATHS, available on Kindle!

Words words, everywhere! ...I have no way to end that.

For the next several weeks (and from time to time after) I intend to devote Wednesdays to word abuse.  Words play an integral role in our society – indeed, they’re quite literally the glue that holds civilization together.  After all, if people couldn’t communicate there would have been no way they could have built society as we know it!  Unfortunately, despite their vital role, many words are bandied about willy nilly, without a thought for their correct use.  Worse are the words that are overused to the point where they basically have no meaning anymore.  These are just two forms of word abuse – there can be several iterations of the phenomena, which I intend to cover over the course of this series as I make them up [this is hard science, guys!  And you can believe that because I hold a science degree ;)]

Speaking of science, lets talk theory.  Not any specific theory, but the word “theory” itself.  Every time I hear lay people or television pundits utter the word, I think ofThe Princess Bride.  I’m sure you all remember this exchange:

[Vizzini has just cut the rope The Dread Pirate Roberts is climbing up]
Vizzini: HE DIDN’T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Theory does not mean what you think it means (unless you’re a scientist, then it probably does mean what you think it means and you can pat yourself on the back).  That’s okay though, because “theory” has been a victim of abuse for a long time.  Once the media got a hold of it sometime during the cable news era, it was all down hill from there.  But now it’s time to recover the word and restore it to its former glory!

You see, in its conventional, every day use the word “theory” means little more than an educated guess based on observations (or arm chair logic in the case of political pundits, but that’s not a road we’re going to go down).

However, in scientific circles the word has quite  a different meaning.  You see, the everyday usage of “theory” has an equivalent in science: the word “hypothesis”.  Theory, however, is a much more robust term.  In order to understand what it means, we must first look at another word, one that is often used as the polar opposite of a theory: fact.

To illustrate the point, I’m going to discuss a real world example – the theory of evolution.  Folks who dislike the theory (usually because they misunderstand or don’t want to understand it) will often say: “It’s a theory, not a fact!”  In reality, these people are both wrong and right.  The theory of evolution is indeed a theory (it’s in the name, after all), but it is also a fact.

Poor guy is probably spinning in his grave, what with all the people misusing the word "theory" in reference to his theory and all.

“But how could this be?!” You may exclaim, shaking your fist at the computer screen, cursing the gods of vocabulary as you do so.  Before you punch a hole in your monitor (boy words get you pretty excited don’t they?), let me explain.  A fact is something that has been observed and is, in general, held to be true.  Gravity is a fact – you could test it by jumping off your roof, although I wouldn’t recommend it.  Evolution is a fact – it has been observed and verified many times, through many independent lines of evidence.  It is a fact the the Earth is round (technically an oblong spheroid, but let’s not be too picky) and that the Sun is the center of the solar system.

In short, facts describe what is; they are generally held truths about the world.  A theory, on the other hand, explains a the facts.  It’s rather like what police do when they come to a crime scene – they gather facts about the crime, better known as evidence, and then try to construct a coherent explanation (a theory) as to what occurred and how.  In scientific terms, a theory is based upon robust evidence and is peer reviewed by experts in the field.  A theory must be falsifiable.  In other words, new evidence can overturn a theory if it is robust enough.  Such an event does not often happen these days, as most theories are flexible enough to incorporate new data that may seem on the surface to be a devastating blow, but when deeper insight is obtained from further study often a slight modification of an existing theory is all that is needed to explain an apparent inconsistency.

A theory also has a range of validity.  When Einstein formulated his Theory of Relativity, that didn’t mean that physicists simply tossed out Newton’s Laws of Motion (they’re called laws for a reason!).  Newtonian physics is useful for large objects moving at relatively slow speeds (i.e. not a significant fraction of light speed).  As an object approaches light speed, Newton’s equations basically become too difficult to use, and Einstein’s theory kicks in.  As objects become super small, both Einstein and Newton step aside and Quantum Theory comes into play.

Whew!  Take a deep breath…the science is done.  Should have given better warning. My bad.

We orbit this, not the other way around. Facts make learning fun! =D

Let me give a brief recap.  Theory as it is conventionally used corresponds to the scientific usage of the word hypothesis.  A hypothesis is, in a basic sense, an educated guess based upon observations.  A theory, on the other hand, is a robust explanation of a natural phenomena, based on established facts.  A theory explains these facts.  In order to be a theory, an idea has to have certain characteristics.  It must be supported by independent lines of evidence, that is to say, by the facts.  A theory must be falsifiable – it must be able to be overturned or modified to explain new evidence.  A theory has a range of validity – it only explains a certain set of facts, and outside of those facts it may have little explanatory power.

As you can see, the actual meaning of the word “theory” is much more complex than its conventional usage.  Given that it was originally a science term, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.  Now that you know the correct, science-y usage of the word, you t00 can feel that vein in your forehead throb in pure rage when someone dares abuse it!

Stay tuned.  I’ll be rehabilitating more words in the coming weeks.  I’m thinking I’ll tackle love and hate next week.  Or maybe love next week and hate the following.  I tend to blog by the seat of my pants, so we will see.

Until then, what are some instances of word abuse that you’ve encountered?  If I like it your word just may appear later in the series =D

Andrew Kincaid writes horror, blogs, and watches way too many scary movies..  He’s making the world a stranger place, one story at a time.  Get in touch with him on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his debut horror anthology ON DARK PATHS, available on Kindle!

Eldritch Tales was compiled as a companion collection to The Necronomicon, and it contains several lesser known tales and Lovecraft’s weird poetry.  This book is far from a definitive collection of Lovecraft’s work, and truly it can’t stand on its own but rather should be read as a supplement toThe Necronomicon.

Like any short story collection, Eldritch Tales was a mixed bag in terms of quality.  Many stories were merely okay, a few were intriguing, and a few were simply bad.  A great many of the stories, especially in the first half of the collection, began to feel repititive.  Many of these dealt with dreams, one of Lovecraft’s favorite topics.  N0rmally such stories are interesting, but after a certain point they became the same old same old – each one featured a wanderer visiting strange cities in his dreams.  It seems each one visited the same set of cities because Lovecraft described each dreamscape in nearly identical ways, although his signature verbosity is always entertaining to read, if only to see what massive words he manages to inject into his prose.  More than once, I found myself Googling a word with which  I wasn’t familiar.  While the quality of Lovecraft’s stories may be variable, they’re always good for a vocabulary lesson!

Few of the stories really stuck out to me in terms of quality – in fact, I honestly had a difficult time thinking of a story that stood head and shoulders above the others.  ‘The Electric Executioner’ was an interesting story, involving a madman who invents a unique way to execute prisoners.  ‘The Beast in the Cave’ was also interesting, although I could have sworn I read it in another collection of Lovecraft’s works – which one, I can’t recall.

While few of the stories stuck out in terms of their quality, what truly stood out to me was just how awful Lovecraft’s poetry was (Note: I am not an avid reader of poetry, so take my criticism with a grain of salt).  I think Lovecraft attempted to emulate his hero, Edgar Allen Poe, with his poetry, but it did not work out terribly well.  I found myself skimming through most of ‘The Fungi of Yuggoth’, the primary collection of weird poems in the book (there were more sprinkled throughout, it’s just this was the longest).  It seemed to me like Lovecraft tried to hard; indeed, some of his rhymes definitely were stretches.

And then, a few of his poems were all done in what was meant to be archaic English, which made them all but impossible to read.  At least one of the prose stories was written in a similar fashion, as was some of the dialog in a smattering of other stories.  I find that to be one of my biggest pet peeves about Lovecraft’s works – as if his often arcane prose isn’t tough enough to decipher, he’ll lapse into old English on top of it!

Fans of H.P. Lovecraft’s works will enjoy Eldritch Tales, although if you have not read it already, I would recommend looking at The Necronomicon first, as it is by far the better volume.

Andrew Kincaid writes horror, blogs, and watches way too many scary movies..  He’s making the world a stranger place, one story at a time.  Get in touch with him on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his debut horror anthology ON DARK PATHS, available on Kindle!