Fandango’s Friday Flashback —Have You Heard The One About Anita Marie?

Fandango’s Friday Flashback —September 25th

First published September 25, 2017

Halloween is a little more then a month away so I have officially lost my mind and I have been busy decking my halls for the season.

So here is a family joke that reflects on my boundless enthusiasm.

Because my idea of taking down Halloween decorations is to turn anything pumpkin related with a face carved into it towards the wall and I will make my skeleton and gargoyle collections look seasonal by sticking them next to indoor plants

someone once asked my Mom:

” How do you know when it’s Halloween at Anita Marie’s house? “

And my Mom said, ” I don’ t know,  how do you know when it’s Halloween at Anita Marie’s house? ” thinking she was helping deliver a punch line.

” No. Really. How do you know?”

My Mom thought about it. ” Well. It’s pretty much always Halloween wherever Marie goes.”

My Mom.

Knowing her daughter better then anyone since 1964

amm

Mystifying Mints and Skull Erasers

RDP Friday – Eerie

Sometimes I go out and look for eerie things- you know, things like eerie people who laugh and growl when they think nobody is looking or abandoned houses with Christmas lights still strung around the living room window even though there isn’t a window to speak of and no one has lived in the house for dozens of years and sometimes those eerie things find me.

And sometimes a few words will jingle around in my head and take on a life of their own.

Yesterday I bought some mints that came in a tin that looks like a Ouija board and I set them down next to my skull erasers and the lightbulb popped on.

Here they are, posed for your amusement and Halloween musings-

Mystifying Mints and Skull Erasers.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

Photo A.M. Moscoso

34 Days and Counting

There are 34 Days left until Halloween- I hope we get there in showroom condition:

Do you know if  there is damaged to the  cerebral regions (temporoparietal junction) of your cortex you could end up with a syndrome where you wake up and look down at your arm or leg or foot  and you will swear to God that you see an alien limb, a twisted monstrous thing that some evil mad scientist sewed in it’s place.

This affliction is called Somatoparaphrenia.

I read a case where a patient woke up and saw this hideous alien looking leg in his bed and when he tried to push it away he fell out of bed- what he saw was pretty horrifying and there was no convincing him of the reality. In the end he was ‘cured’ but on the other hand ( see what I did there ) maybe he just said what people wanted to hear.

It’s a theme that has turned up in horror fiction- the human/bug hybrids, the eyes that are transplanted from a corpse  to another person and take on a ‘life’ of their own.

Turns out that those ideas came from a very real place- our brains.

 

Where I first heard about Somatoparaphrenia – 

” The Man Who Fell Out of Bed ” from the book ” The Man who Mistook His Wife For A Hat “. Personally, I Think this book is perfect for your Halloween reading list. You’ll recognize the inspiration  for all sorts of stories from Sci-Fi and Horror.