Ghost Upon the Floor

... with a little help from good old Stephen King.

Just as I was beginning to get discouraged from my YouTube searching... I found this. And it made all the difference.

Looking to buy a new home? You may be in luck.

The "Amityville Horror House" has gone on sale in New York state. Brought to fame by the 1975 crime in which Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered members of his family, and the family which later moved in and the novel and numerous film adaptations they inspired, the house will set you back a mere $1.15 million. The five-bedroom Dutch Colonial went on the market Monday.

Whether or not you believe (or have even followed) the saga of controversy over the experiences of the Lutz family when they lived in the home after the murders, the story of the Amityville haunting remains one of the most enduring accounts of a haunting in modern American folklore.

The book, which catapulted the story to fame, began after George and Kathy Lutz, the alleged victims of the haunting, were introduced by a book editor to Jay Anson, the book's author. Since it's publication, the story of the Lutzes has received harsh criticism, including a debunking of several claims of damage made by a couple who bought the house in 1977 on the television show "That's Incredible." Local Native American leaders have also denied claims made in the book that the local Shinnecock tribe once abandoned the mentally ill and dying on the land which would late become the house.

However, even in the face of these criticisms, though it was proven there was no snow on the date in which the Lutzes claimed to find cloven foot prints outside their home, the legend lives on. Most recently, The History Channel broadcast "Amityville- The Haunting and Amityville- Horror or Hoax?" in October 2000. In the documentary, George Lutz is quoted six years before his death as saying, "I believe this has stayed alive for 25 years because it's a true story. It doesn't mean that everything that has been said about it is true. It's certainly not a hoax. It's real easy to call something a hoax. I wish it was. It's not."

And now, for a little vintage paranormal TV, going back to 1979 "In Search... of The Amityville Horror."



YouTube User: FriendshipTown

Photo: Daily Mail

If you search for the kind of terms and tags I like best on YouTube, you are bound to come upon things like this devilishly eerie little animated short film. In "The Balloon," a little girl encounters a jester in the tradition of every creepy clown or Harlequin figure you have ever seen, and faces a choice.



YouTube User: ninique

And a special thanks to Season of Shadows for first bringing this to my attention.

...in 1897, the novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker went on sale in London.

I've read the novel in its entirety several times, and I try to crack it back open every few years or so. Never does it fail to wrap me up in its dark, intelligent and complex atmosphere, with Stoker's endlessly debatable timelessness. No matter how many times Hollywood attempts to take on the story, there is nothing that comes close to the greatness of the novel.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, over one hundred years later, you can read Stoker's masterpiece here on Google Books/Good Reads or download the eBook.

And for something not entirely unrelated, this beacon of hope for the children who are, of course, our future, was brought to my attention today.

And now, the Sunday funnies.

While one may not often think of the eerie and macabre when thinking of American literary giant Mark Twain, the man's body of work is certainly not without some reflection on the darker sides of life.

I stumbled upon this selection from "The Adventures of Mark Twain," a 1985 claymation film. No, these are not the singing raisins, but the film was directed by Will Vinton, who is better known for his "The California Raisins." I have not seen the film, but have found that, while initially opening with a small theatrical release, it was released on DVD only recently. Wikipedia tells me the child characters in this clip are Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher.

"The Mysterious Stranger" is the last known novel attempted by Mark Twain. There are known to be two versions of the story attempted by Twain. The first, normally called "The Chronicle of Young Satan" follows the nephew of the Biblical Satan during the Middle Ages. The second, much shorter, attempt is titled "Schoolhouse Hill" and concerns Twain's characters of Finn, Sawyer and Thatcher and their encounters with Satan.

This unnerving, thought-provoking claymation clip features what appears to be the latter version, with Twain himself and his child characters encountering the author's Satan.



YouTube User: insertcoolname