Overbrook Asylum

It is also known as the Essex County Hospital, the area is heavily guarded for the sake of preventing further vandalism and general criminal activity. I for one salute this, preservation of these buildings seems to be scarce in my country so I am always glad to hear when action is taken anywhere.

In 1986 the land was designated for the new location of the insane asylum and was located in Verona, now Cedar Grove, it was selected as a remote location, high altitude and peaceful for rehabilitation.

Like many it was soon victim to being at full capacity, it was so large it had its own train stop, grew its own food and the farming was considered to be helpful towards the rehabilitation of the patients. It was its own little town and even had a semi-professional baseball team.

The 1960’s and 70’s brought the further introduction of new treatments, medication and brought a decline in admitted patients. It still operated into the 1990’s and slowly parts were abandoned, which meant urban explorers and then local legends started. In 2007 Essex Court announced a smaller, modern place would be built. Overbrook would become a 90 acre country park.

For New Jersey teens exploring this was a rite of passage, “the asylum”, “the bin” and “the hilltop” tested their mettle. It is a sad fact that the buildings have been demolished. Now the site will hopefully be used for local benefit.

The site for the asylum is not that of the sanatorium, the Essex County Mountain Sanatorium stood elsewhere but was left entirely without preservation and nothing remains. The once lovely building for aiding tuberculosis sufferers is no longer standing. Nearby the penitentiary from 1872 will eventually follow suit no doubt.

In 2008 Choke was filmed at the Overbrook Asylum and so has been preserved in the form of video/film at least.

21^st December, 1917, an article appeared in The New York Times about a terrible tragedy at Overbrook. A set of boilers failed during a cold wave, 24 patients died within 20 days. There were 1,800 patients at the time in the asylum and it gave rise to 32 cases of frostbite. The conditions were bad enough that the director sent a letter to relatives, he encouraged them to take their relatives away until the situation could be resolved.

Ghost Adventures visited the site but they did not give the official location during the filming, but Ghost Hunters and their sister show, GH Academy also visited. The TV shows go with the idea that forgotten patients still wander the halls. Much like Danver’s and others of a similar build the idea of the underground tunnels draws a good deal of attention too.

Building II was the location for the morgue and criminally insane, apparently, I do wonder why these two always feature together on plans… and it is said that there is a nurse there walking the halls. Alongside this are reports of screaming, bangs and direct threats on a vocal level for people to leave the property.

I could find nothing outside of the TV shows about hauntings, I am more than aware about the claims from these shows about false evidence too. Many locals seem quick to dispute the cases and tales as well, so have you anything to add?

By J. E. Bailey – Images of America: Cedar Grove, Public Domain, Link

 

The Kraken

I’m not talking about the rum, but I do think the bottles that brand come in look rather cool. I am talking about the legendary sea-monster that seems to be rumoured to well around the coasts of Norway and Greenland. It is a cephalopod which generally includes things like squid, octopus and nautilus. This particular type of marine life is characterized by large bodies, tentacles and many fishermen call them inkfish. Many of them do squirt ink so this does make sense.

There is a theory that many authors hold that the legend might be originated from sightings of giant squids. Giant squids can grow between 40-50 feet. It’s name is taken from Norwegian and an old Icelandic saga mentions a beast called hafgufa which swallows up men and ships. Some early accounts seem more crab-like than giant squid, but whatever the account it seems that the giant tentacled beast is now the modern accepted depiction.

A pretty famous poem by Alfred Tennyson was published in 1830 describing the massive creature at the depths of the ocean. In 1851 came Moby Dick by Herman Melville and it is described as a giant squid and similarly forms part of Jules Verne’s 1870 tales of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.

The kraken is also referred to as a leviathan, this is from the Jewish belief and referenced in their texts in the Book of Job a large primeval monster is defeated by the god Hadad and various interpretations range from dragons and whales to sea monsters in general.

It is part of the Satanic Bible (1969) by Anton Szandor LaVey uses the Leviathan of the element of water, listing the leviathan of the Four Crown Princes of Hell. It is however not described as a kraken exactly but more as a large sea-serpent.

In modern culture the kraken has been imagined for various stories, 2010 saw the “release the kraken” line delivered by Liam Neeson as Zeus, and yes it is still used in our Dungeons and Dragons campaigns to this date, the film Clash of the Titans uses it as a servant of the Olympian Gods. In 2011 Wolverine and Hercules are attacked by the kraken, Marvel Comics. In 2016 King Nereus takes on a form of the kraken but is defeated by Aqua-Woman (Mera) in the DC comics universe of the Bombshells series.

The Disney series of Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man’s Chest specifically, also brings the kraken to the big screen and TV’s as it devours Jack Sparrow under the servitude of Davy Jones. Used as servant it devours the souls of men marked by Davy Jones who are overdue on their payments. It appears at the end of At The World’s End as dead on the beach. I actually like its depiction in the second film as it felt like an all encompassing and fearsome creature.

It wouldn’t be my blog without mentioning H P Lovecraft and The Call of Cthulhu, the novel was written in 1926 and the Cthulhu Mythos scholar Robert M Price points to Tennyson’s influence when Lovecraft designed his description of Cthulhu. It is certainly a strong theory given his monstrous tentacles and that fact he is said to reside under the ocean in a large sunken city known as R’yleh. The location of this city was given by Lovecraft as being in the South Pacific. The position is known as ‘Nemo’ point which is a part of the ocean furthest away from any landmass. It is also known as a spacecraft cemetery, because a lot of our space rubbish is dumped there on re-entry as it is less likely to cause a collision with vessels and maritime traffic and is pretty lifeless due to a lack of nutrients in the area.

So I’m still a little off-topic from the kraken but I think it is loosely related so there is actually an old historical monument out there, the Antarctic Research Station, полюс недоступности (excuse any misspelling please), Pole of Inaccessibility Research Station at the Southern Pole and was founded and defined in 1958. It is also very cold there, -58.2c (-72.8f) and was initially reached on the 14^th December, 1958 by an 18 man party.

26^th December, 1958 the team left as it was too far from regular stations to be a safe venture. It has been visited since then and a bust of Vladimir Lenin was left at the site facing towards Moscow. In 2007 Team N2i ventured there and found the bust to still be visible and I am wondering if the kraken/Cthulhu would even notice knocking it over?

So do you think it is real? Asleep I some great depth or just an overly inflated tale about giant squid?

Sources: bbc.co.uk, traverse.npolar.no, wikipedia, gutenberg.org, victorianweb.org, lovecraftf.andom.org

Pirates of the Caribbean films

Old copy of the Satanic Bible – forgot I had this until I went digging around, old goth me would be impressed maybe.

H P Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu (from the compendium brought for me by friends!)

By Pierre Denys de Montfort († 1820) – Ellis, R. 1994. Monsters of the Sea. Robert Hale Ltd., Public Domain, Link

 

Hammersmith Ghost Murder Case

This case is interesting because it was in 1804 and set out a legal precedent in the UK about self-defense; could someone be held liable for their actions even if they were the consequence of a mistaken/misguided belief…

Near the end of summer in 1803 a number of people claimed to have seen and even been attacked by a ghost in the Hammersmith area, London. It was believed that the ghost was a man who committed suicide the year before and was buried in the Hammersmith churchyard. It was believed he should not be buried in consecrated grounds, it was thought that suicide victims would not find rest if that happened.

3^rd January, 1804 and a member of the armed patrols set up in response shot and killed a plasterer, Thomas Millwood. The man mistook the white clothes of Millwoods trade for the ghost and 29 year old Francis Smith was found guilty of murder. Mr Smith was tried for willful murder, and a witness stated she had warned the victim he might want to put on something that stopped him being all white, she had said he had already been mistaken for the ghost on a previous occasion.

Millwood’s sister testified that Smith had called on her brother to sop or he would shoot but he then fired almost immediately. The Lord Chief Baron Macdonald advised the jury that Smith’s character before may well have been good and there may have been no malice but the question was more if he had at that point shot with intent to kill.

Smith had not been provoked and had not made any attempt to apprehend the ghost, therefore he felt that the jury should be directed to find him guilty if they believed the facts presented. It took an hour for the jury to come back with a verdict of manslaughter. MacDonald said they could not deliver that response, it must be either guilty or acquittal, the belief that he was a ghost was to him irrelevant to the case. The jury then came back with guilt… MacDonald stated he intended to pass the case to the king, who had the power to commute the sentence.

Initially the trial stated that it was a sentence of hanging and dissection. It was commuted to a year’s hard labour. The publicity meant that the true culprit of the ghostly encounters came forwards, John Graham had been pretending to be the ghost so that he could frighten his apprentice, and his apprentice had been scaring the local children with stories of ghosts.

The impact on the law was that a question arose about whether the action taken under a mistaken self-defense would be chargeable, and it went to the Court of Appeal. It wasn’t clarified until 1984, when appellant, Gladstone Williams, had seen a man dragging a younger man along the street, the younger man was shouting for help. Williams thought that an assault was taking place and intervened, Williams had not known but the person being dragged had been caught trying to commit theft. Williams was then convicted of assault with actual bodily harm, and the Lord Chief Justice Lane referred to the debate when the appeal came up.

It was a problematic issue, Williams was trying to help albeit without understanding the situation he had seen someone in peril and thought he was doing the right thing. It was not unreasonable perhaps, that he stepped in trying to assist, the man was crying out for help. So in the end for Williams an appeal was allowed and his conviction was quashed… the decision was also later written into a more concise reference for law, Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, section 76.

And all this because a man dressed up in a white sheet and tried to scare his apprentice!

Public Domain, Link

 

Ricárdo López – Björk Stalker

TRIGGER WARNING

A quick search online will give you plenty of information but to give you a summary and because it is probably flitting to the nature of my blog, I am going to summaries this one.

López was born in Uruguay and the family moved to the USA where the seemingly easy, good-natured López grew up. He was regarded as a fairly nice person who had a dew male friends but never had a girlfriend or seemed to hold friendships with women. López dropped out of high school but didn’t pursue any of his artistic talents due to fears of being rejected by any schools and fearing that he was inadequate.

By 18 years of age he was a social recluse, he seemingly found a better place in fantasy and became enthralled by celebrities. In 1993 he became obsessed by Icelandic singer, Björk, following her career and learning everything he could about her.

At the beginning it seemed quite positive, she was a muse for him and overtime, during his 803 page diary, it showed he was losing connection with reality. His main motivation seemed to be a way to find for her to accept him as a friend nothing really suggested it was sexually motivated either. He spoke of a way to go back to the 1970’s and find her to be her friend…

Overall his diary is really an account of a terribly lonely man, he felt inadequate, ugly and unsuccessful. López’s diary referenced suicide and had fourteen mentions of murder. In it he had mentioned other celebrities but an overwhelming 408 references were made about Björk.

All-in-all up until this point I was seemingly a lonely man, obsessed with a woman he could not meet, but the story does not end there; hence me including it on the blog.

In 1996 he was living alone in Hollywood, Florida, and found an article in Entertainment Weekly about her romantic involvement with Goldie (Clifford Joseph Prince). He avidly disliked the relationship because he was a black man and felt betrayed at her having Goldie as a lover. He decides he needs to harm her because of this relationship and the feeling of betrayal.

14th January 1996 and López stopped writing his diaries, instead he moved to making video diaries instead. He made eleven tapes in total, each lasting around two hours. They were filmed within his apartment, a squalid place hat he referred to as his pigsty, he would also record the videos in various states of undress.

By the end of his series he had decided Björk must die and in his diary he states that he’s going to kill her by sending a package, he wanted to send her to hell. His intention was a letter bomb loaded with needles of HIV infected blood gained from a prostitute and abandoned his plan when he realised he could not do it, it was unfeasible.

López changed tactics, in June he began to construct a bomb in a book that was to be sent to her home, he wanted it to look like it had been posted by her record label. It was devised to spray acid in her face, to leave her disfigured.

12th September 1996 and López makes his last entry, he films his preparation of going to the post office. He is nervous but if he aroused suspicion he was going to commit suicide if they tried to detain him. He returns from the post office and resumes the entry, he has Björk’s music playing in the background and is naked in the video.

López then shaves his head and paints it with red and green paint, he colours his lips black and tells that camera that he is now nervous. Declaring that he is not depressed, or drunk, he then shoots himself with a .38 caliber pistol and slumps forwards. It looks like he was hoping that the blood would splatter on the sign behind him, “The best of me. Sept 12”, but the bullet did not exit his skill and he fell forwards.

You can find this on YouTube and other sites, I haven’t posted the link here, I don’t think it’s necessary. Watching the video, which I did, I felt quite upset because this was a man who was clearly very ill and ultimately he killed himself. You can hear the noises of his blood falling down and exiting and yes it’s real… but it’s not nice. Don’t go trying to watch it unless you know you can cope. I have warned you and accept no blame if you do.

López’s death was discovered by a maintenance worker (poor thing) on 16th September, the smell was terrible and the blood was seeping through the ceiling. The worker called the police who gained entry and found him decomposing once they gained entry. They also found a further message above the wall in black letters, “The 8mm Tapes Are A Documentation Of A Crime Terrorist Material. They Are For The F.B.I”, the apartment was then evacuated and searched for devices.

There was only one that had been constructed and it was the one he had posted, police contacted Scotland Yard and after viewing the last tape the Metropolitan Police managed to intercept the package from a South London post office. It was safely detonated.

López died not knowing that only a few days before he had shot himself Björk and Goldie has ended their relationship. Björk herself was affected by the event and did eventually respond, no doubt relieved that the thing had not been delivered and put her and her child at risk. No one that knew López had considered him dangerous either, and overall it seems that this was a man who’s mental health had degraded and was not as likely to be noticed as he had always been very secluded and kept away from people.

By Raph_PH – APEVicPark270518-97, CC BY 2.0, Link

 

Kenny Veach

It started with the YouTube community and some videos abut a missing hiker, that’s how I saw it anyway. Kenny Veach had gone into the Nevada desert, he’d gone back after a series of comments bating him about going to the ‘M Cave’ and supposedly the strange feelings he’d had about being there.

North of Las Vegas, Sheep Mountains had been the location an in 2014 he went out to look at the area again. Kenny Veach usually went with his girlfriend, Sheryon Pilgrim, or went alone. He would go without GPS and seemingly seemed to come across a bit gung-ho about the whole thing and his own safety.

He pointed out on a YouTube comment (as snakebitmgee) that near the Wellis Air Force Base, he’d found a cave shaped like a capital m and it had caused his entire body to vibrate, he became to scared he left. 22^nd November, 2014 a Saturday, and 3 News Las Vegas reported that they had found the man’s cellphone near a deep vertical mine shaft. The 47 year old man was meant to have come back after a two day hike but the family alerted authorities when he failed to return. Red Rock Search & Rescue Centre did not find anything more and said he may not have fallen or been down there, the area was searched again.

Kenny’s first visit had caused the fights, his second he reported on the presence of a black ram watching him from the top of a ridge. It didn’t deter him from his third trip, the self-proclaimed daredevil/cowboy took his 9mm gun and headed back that way. Some YouTube commenters had tried to deter him from going back out, the area is known to have many hazards; the terrain, animals, dehydration and how remote it is as just a little summary.

Sheryon Pilgrim (girlfriend) had even explained he was plagued by depression but had refused to seek any help, It may well have contributed to the situation as he’d taken risks that perhaps others might not.

So let’s move on to theories, did he see something around the base he should not have? Was it occult based? Did he simply succumb to the desert ravages? Or did he fake his own death to begin a new life as many struggles and depression caught up with him?

Wellis Air Force Base is one of those places that has come with conspiracy theories, secret testing facilities and hidden alien presences amongst them. The U.S government agencies are often under fire for secrecy and this is no shock, government secrecy and actions means speculation but I highly doubt he was captured or killed for seeing something as the man wasn’t trying to break onto the base.

A comment I found on one site was about how Kenny had a fascination with the occult, and that he may have known about local rumours that the cave was more than a natural occurrence. Some suggest that the cave lures people in with a macabre power; it can lure in depressed people to their deaths or a portal to another dimension. Me? I don’t think I have anything to work on here other than rumour, local lore or even retrospective speculation from others.

So this leaves two other options which are mundane explanations, I know, I blog about so many things like ghosts or oddities but here I am going for the natural ones? Hear me out though please?

Faking his death? It seems to me that this is possible but unlikely. He had certainly got friends and a family in the area but his cell-phone was found in the vicinity of the area whilst not entirely conclusive it points to someone wanting to prove a point, not to disappear and there are other comments online which leads me to think the most likely answer is below and not the most exciting.

Kenny Veach was 47 years old, suffering from untreated (and undiagnosed) depression or possibly, even another or accompanied, by another mental health disorder. A comment from his own girlfriend on YouTube also leads to come information that may assist more.

He had left home at 6am for the one hour drive out to the place, she said she thinks his depression had got worse as well due to money issues. 14 months before his disappearance he’d quit a job he had been in for 17 years and was living off his retirement money. Suicide ran in the family history and his dad had committed suicide via a gun when Kenny was in his early 20’s, he had taken his own 9mm out with him when he went on the trip.

She explained that she had found his search history and that it had contained pages on suicide. She had also said he told her that if he were to kill himself it would not be at home and so things in her mind felt sadly concluded.

I am, also sadly, inclined to believe her as the man had severe mental health issues he would not willingly address. He was not prepared to put her, and his family, through sorting out the aftermath and her comments and his actions seem to match up that way.

The search hasn’t really ended either, 3 News LV also reported that Red Rock Search & Rescue had gone out to look for another missing man but they keep an eye out on another missing cold cases when they do go that way. Kenny Veach is one of the ones on that list, the last search I saw online that might have been with that in mind was 27^th April, 2019. Perhaps the answer will happen one day and I hope if the family require closure that it does.

It was quiet hard to write this one, I wanted to cover his story but I wanted to ensure I tried to remain respectful. I hope that I have.

https://youtu.be/EfdrY-2sROQ

https://youtu.be/Gc4qjTrpEa0

https://www.youtube.com/user/snakebitmgee

ghosttheory.com

Mysterious Universe

YouTube in general

Reddit

3 News Las Vegas