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THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, OcTObER 31, 2019
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IN ONE EAR • ELLEDA WILSON
PLAYING GAMES
F
rom the Saturday, Oct. 31, 1885 edition of The Daily
Morning Astorian:
“Tonight is ‘all Hallow e’en’ and a good many old
memories of old-fashioned games and sports cluster
around it. In many localities it is customary on this eve-
ning to have family gatherings at which a good many
funny pranks are played, furnishing occasion for consid-
erable innocent mirth.
“Tonight is the great night of the year to tell fortunes,
and if ever told fortunes come true, it is those that are told
on ‘all Hallow e’en.’”
One favorite prognosticating parlor game during that
era was the Halloween cake, according to Victorian-Era.
org (bit.ly/hallowcake). The host, while preparing the cake,
would hide a ring, coin, button, key and thimble inside it.
The oldest person present would cut the cake without
saying a word, as the first words said after the cake was
cut were prophetic.
Whoever received the ring in their piece of cake would
marry, the coin represented wealth, the button meant the
recipient would meet their true love, and the key holder
would travel.
But woe to the unlucky one who received the thimble
— he or she would be a bachelor or old maid. Until next
Halloween, anyway.
SIX ANGRY ARMS
BELIEVE … OR DON’T
O
n Aug. 16, deep in the woods in North Carolina,
there was an intriguing sighting by Hickory resi-
dent and Bigfoot tracker Doug Teague. So, of course,
the Ear saved his adventure for Halloween.
The incident happened when Teague went with his
dog, Daisy, to retrieve some game cameras, he said in a
video on the Catawba Valley Bigfoot Research Face-
book page, recorded on Aug. 30. He is pictured, in a
screen shot from his video (bit.ly/DTbigfoot).
On his way out, he heard some knocks, then a golf
ball-sized rock was thrown from the top of a hill, and
rolled down. When he took out his cell phone to start
recording — but kept malfunctioning in the heat — a
rock was tossed again.
He didn’t see anything, but off to his right, there
were “numerous loud grunts,” then another rock came
down. When he looked up, he could see something
black sitting on a stump. A still shot from his video is
shown.
He said the “object” moved every now and then,
even revealing a “perfect profile. … And it’s awesome,
because it does look like a gorilla. … You can see chin,
nose, forehead.”
Then one of the critters (there were three, he said, but
he could only see one) started vocalizing, and another
rock was tossed. Then the one Teague was watching
stood up.
“It looked down the hill,” he reported, “it turned to
its left, and walks diagonally down the hill. Looked at
me once.
“It didn’t have the arm swing … but it was definitely
… 7 1/2 to 8 feet tall, and it had a beautiful silver sheen
to it.
“It had longer hair on the arms and hips, and it kind
of turned, went right over the hill and just disappeared.”
Sadly, there is no video of this part of the encounter, but
he is adamant about what he saw.
“… To me they’re real,” Teague insisted. “I know
they’re there. I mean, I’ve seen ‘em before, I’ve col-
lected evidence, I’ve got friends who do the same. …
Either you believe, or you don’t.”
TWEET NO MORE
T
witter posts took a macabre twist with The
Tweet Hereafter website which, ironically, died
and was resurrected by the Internet Archive at bit.ly/
gonetweet. The site was a compilation of the last Twit-
ter tweets by “notable, newsworthy, famous or infamous
people.”
Some posts can be downright creepy, such as that of
Daphne Caruana Galiz, a Maltese reporter investigat-
ing government corruption.
On Oct. 16, 2017, at 2:40 p.m. she tweeted, “That
crook Schembri was in court today, pleading that he is
not a crook.” Twenty minutes later, she was killed by a
car bomb.
And then there was Colleen Burns, who tweeted,
“That view tho @ Grand Canyon National Park” on July
7, 2016, at 9:48 p.m. She tripped and fell 400 feet to her
death there the next day.
Others are poignant, such as surfing filmmaker
Sonny Miller’s tweet, “I get by with a little help
from my friends! Live to Love! Love to Live! …” At
noon the next day, he died of a heart attack. (He is
pictured, courtesy of his Instagram feed, @
sonnymillerfilms)
“In the age of social media,” the website warns,
“those of us who post will ultimately leave behind a
final message, intentional or not. … What will your last
words be?”
MR. GHOSTY’S BLUFF
SCARED OUT OF
THEIR KNICKERS
A
Halloween must-see horror movie with a local
touch is “It Came from Beneath the Sea,” about
an octopus on the rampage. A colorful poster from the
1955 film is shown.
The six-armed menace from the deep — two unani-
mated and unbudgeted arms were removed on the final
model used — has become enormous, radioactive and
incredibly angry, after being exposed to H-bomb testing.
In the path of his wrath are: a freighter, which
he overturns; the Golden Gate Bridge, which he
grapples and demolishes; some buildings in San Fran-
cisco he found particularly irritating; and a hapless
submarine.
And, for the local angle, he also attacked the peace-
ful coastal town of Harper’s Cove, near Astoria, Ore-
gon, killing some locals in the onslaught.
You can watch the black and white version of this
gem at tinyurl.com/octup-2. Movie history fans will
note that Ray Harryhausen, king of the stop-action
critters, did the creepy cephalopod special effects.
More info is here: tinyurl.com/octup-1 and tinyurl.com/
octup-3
One question lingers — where is Harper’s Cove?
A
ghostly encounter, dated March 29, 1894, from the
George Flavel Facebook page (courtesy of the Clat-
sop County Historical Society):
“The latest excitement in an Uppertown neighborhood
is a haunted house. In the lonely hours of night clumsy
ghosts monkey around in the cat-loft, fall over chairs and
mash dishes, when there are not any chairs and dishes
there.
“Last night the occupants of the house called in a neigh-
bor to help keep a watch for Mr. Ghosty, who made his
presence felt by his usual antics at the hour of 12.
“The gentlemen on watch were armed to the teeth with
guns, hatchets and clubs and as soon as the racket started
in the garret they commenced to run a bluff on ghosty by
pounding on the floor with their hatchets and hollering out
that they would shoot.
“After this break the noise upstairs ceased and the next
mysterious round was at the back door as if trying to enter.
That settled it, the occupants proceeded without any cer-
emony to take their departure out of the front door. The
affair is to be kept a secret.”
R
WHAT WILL YOU BE?
W
ant to dress up for Halloween with minimal effort
and expense? Check out “102 cheap and easy Hal-
loween costumes,” with instructions, from Livingonthe-
cheap.com (tinyurl.com/hallowup).
You could be a flowerpot, or a crayon, or a bag of jel-
lybeans, or even a floor lamp. Or you could be Medusa
(with rubber snakes), a Freudian slip or a cereal killer. On
the other hand, the Victorian photo shown demonstrates
what can go quite dreadfully wrong when making home-
made masks.
And, the perfect “keep it simple” un-costume: Be a
werewolf, but wear your regular clothes, explaining that
Halloween did not fall on a full moon.
umors abound that Fort Stevens State Park, espe-
cially Battery Russell, is haunted. There are tales
of a young man with a flashlight looking for enemy sol-
diers, another in a soldier’s uniform, carrying a knife,
strange noises, giggling and cold spots.
The HauntedPlaces.org website (bit.ly/FortBoo) has
several reports from those who’ve been scared out of
their knickers at the park:
• C. Roberts: “… We left right around dusk on that
June day and we heard someone yell ‘fire,’ and we actu-
ally heard the cannon boom, and the ground shook, too.
We ran to our car, and then we saw the guy with the lan-
tern follow us almost to the parking lot.”
• Tamera Thorn: “… I was walking through Battery
Clark with a friend of mine one day, looking around,
when we saw a dark figure float across the hall in front
of us …”
• Marian: “… We visited the old Battery Russell, and
we could hear voices faintly ... I could ‘smell’ the fir-
ing guns …”
• Lynne Coughlin: “My son, Alex and I walked
through the bunkers, (and) you can hear people talking
in hushed tones (but) no one around tourist-wise … we
felt as if we were being watched by hundreds of eyes
…”
• NickTurner: “One time we we pulled up to unpack
at our campsite, and as I reached for the door handle
my arm was scratched. Three 3- to 4-inch parallel thin
bloody lines on the bottom of my forearm. We were
around blackberry bushes and I would say that was the
culprit … but I hadn’t gotten out of the car yet.”
• Katrina Brown: “… I went inside a building and
took a video. … At the end of the video I was by some
stairs, and you hear what seems like a girl saying
‘yeah’ and giggling. There was nobody around but me.
… I definitely felt something around me when I was
walking.”
A Halloween visit to the park just might be in order.
TRICKS, NO TREATS
‘C
PH security has been dealing with a rash of van-
dalism the last couple of weeks,” Central Penin-
sula Hospital in Soldotna, Alaska, posted on its Face-
book page on Oct. 24. “Several vehicles have had their
sunroofs or windshields broken.”
“However, the vandals are not what you may expect,”
the post explained. The miscreants are delinquents of the
avian kind. “They are crows, or ravens, that have been wit-
nessed dropping rocks onto vehicles.”
“We have reached out to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for
advice on how to deter the vandals,” the post added. “We
are installing owl decoys in the parking lot today, per one
suggestion.”
In case you’re wondering, a follow-up post noted that
“the fake owl did nothing.” The hospital is “researching
other options.” And probably not watching “The Birds.”