MEMOIR
The Murder HouseDAEGU, KOREA 18 January 2010 |
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Like so many stories, it began with a drunken promise. My friend Nathan told me he’d found something. “It’s the most amazing thing in the world,” he said.
Naturally I didn’t put too much faith in those words, but I nonetheless looked forward to the day I’d become a part of the secret; the main frustration being that three people in the whole world knew about this “amazing thing” and I wasn’t one of them…
***
One warm summer night we were drinking in a blues bar. There were many familiar faces, but I found myself alone with Nathan, talking about the “amazing thing.”
“It’s a house,” he said. “An abandoned house.”
My excitement died a little. How exciting could a house possibly be? In Dundee, damn near half the buildings were derelict. “You’ve got to see it… It’s beautiful. Not just any house; a big house. Ancient. On the _____ Road, too.”
I was a little surprised to learn of the location. ______ Road was prime property, with even the smallest buildings going for unreasonable prices. “Where is it?”
“I bet you don’t know…”
“Of course, I just asked…”
“You’d never guess. It’s right in the middle of ______ Road. You’ve walked past it at least twice a day for the last five years…”
“Bullshit!” I laughed, thinking Nathan had gone nuts.
***
In the early hours of the morning we walked back from the bar towards our flat. There was a group of us – Cameron, Daniel, Nathan and I.
Nathan stopped at a junction halfway along the road. It was indeed a place I’d passed several times a day for five years. I looked about, unsure what to expect. One thing I did observe was the CCTV camera above us, swivelling about in pursuit of something invisible.
“This is it,” Nathan said, gesturing at what looked like a three storey building on the corner.
“Fuck off,” I said, in utter disbelief. I couldn’t have imagined a more expensively placed property in the whole of the city. It made no sense… Moreover, the windows were all intact; nothing was boarded up or damaged.
We slipped quickly down a set of stairs, leading from the main road to a dark, terrifying corridor fifteen feet below street level. It was pitch black down there, and cold.
Even in the dark, though, the house was different. The view from above had been that of a typical Victorian era Dundee house – big, sturdy and grey; large windows and black railings. There had been nothing to differentiate it from the hundred other houses on ______ Road.
Down that little flight of stairs, though, there were weeds protruding from between the cobbled walkway and from the gaps in the walls on either side. A door beneath the stairs was boarded shut and something had been spray painted over it.
Nathan and Daniel told the three of us to wait, leaving Cameron and I to wait in the dark. After a minute or so Nathan beckoned us after them, and we proceeded around the side of the building, where the weeds became thicker, the path rougher, and eventually it felt as though we were in a dark, wet forest.
There were pieces of furniture littered about, which had been overgrown and had become a part of the jungle. Trees and grass grew together so ferociously it became hard to tell where one ended and one began. As we pushed further forward the house kept growing. By the time we reached what must once have been a garden the house appeared some four storeys tall.
The garden, it seemed, went on and on. I realised then that I’d actually lived for a year in the student residence next door to this building. From the road they were not next door, but my old home bordered the giant garden. Of course, back then I hadn’t realised there was a garden there. I had assumed it was a piece of wasteland, waiting to be turned into a car park or more student housing.
***
After climbing on an up-ended mattress with a chair balanced on top, we all stood in a room on the second floor – cloaked in a frightening, absolute darkness. The garden had been dark but the house was different. It was less a darkened space than a place absolutely devoid of light. It felt as though the house was sucking light from outside and consuming it before it passed through the windows. We could see the moon and the stars, but their light fell inches short of the building… I thought that if I lit a candle or a torch the room would swallow it. The same felt true of sound. There was nothing to hear in the house. Nothing from outside could be heard.
Nathan guided us around the rooms, up and down the ornate spiral staircase that lead from the basement to the attic, and I used the flash on my camera to illuminate the way as best I could. Evidently my light-swallowing theory had proven inaccurate. But perhaps it would all have been a little less disturbing had we seen nothing at all.
You see, this wasn’t an abandoned house. The previous residents had obvious not planned upon leaving… The house was fully furnished. There were wardrobes, chairs, tables, TVs, record players (that’s right, not even CD players), beds, curtains, nightstands… There were clothes, reading glasses and newspapers; letters and photos of the people who’d once lived there… A walking stick hung by the front door, awaiting the residents’ return, and a cup of tea seat atop the bedside table, long since abandoned.
We moved in silence, our footsteps not even producing echoes. The only thing I could think to describe the world around me at that time was “thick.” The air was thick, and maybe it was just dust and damp, but it was odd. I’m usually the sort of guy to get scared easily, but I felt no fear. Just the overwhelming sense of not being welcome. The house was pushing from around us. It was trying to crush us with the weight of its atmosphere. It almost felt like hands pushing down on our heads and shoulders. I could feel myself being pushed towards the door.
In the kitchen we found the most visually disturbing image – vines, roots and branches had pushed through the walls, windows and ceilings, and taken over the room. Everything was green and smelled rotten. The floor, too, was covered in maybe-living-maybe-dead plant matter. It all reminded me of The Evil Dead.
By the light of my camera’s flash, we were able to discern the last days of the former inhabitants. The letters and magazines all were dated around the middle of May 1980. The very last newspaper was from the 16th May of that year, twenty seven years prior to our discovery. Twenty seven years exactly.
***
The next day I went to a bookstore across town, with a friend. We had a cup of coffee and read books. We were students and couldn’t afford to buy them, so we used the place like a library – with the coffee being our late fee.
As we sat and read I told her about the house. She was obviously a little sceptical, but she believed me for the most part, and was curious to see the house for herself. I told her to ask Nathan; I would never be setting foot in that building again. The sense of unwelcome was too much to bear.
As we sat, another friend – Joe – appeared. We had no idea he would be there, and he gave no explanation. I wasn’t aware he’d ever read a book in his life. He sat and joined us. Naturally, I told him about the house.
“Wait a minute,” he said, and ran off.
A little later he returned with a well known book from the crime section. It was one of the sensationalised best-seller books from a few years earlier that I had seen and dismissed without reading. It had sold thousands of copies in the local area, and its subject matter was that of the area’s foulest, most depraved murders.
Joe flipped through the book quickly until he found a picture. He showed me it and I felt the same sensation over my head and shoulder as that I’d felt in the house. It was a picture of the front door of that very building…
***
According to the book, on May 16th 1980, an old couple had been living in the house. They returned one evening to find a burglar in their basement. The burglar overpowered them, tied them up and went off to find a claw hammer. When he returned he tore their bodies apart, then rebuilt them at a window, tearing the edges of their mouths into warped grins…
The next morning, students living next door – in the building I had occupied some twenty three years later – kicked a football over the wall and ran into the garden to retrieve it, whereupon they were confronted with the twisted smiles of two dismembered pensioners.
The killer, having had his first taste of blood, went on a killing spree, heading south into England before being caught.
***
A week later I e-mailed my dad a cleaned-up version of the story, neglecting to mention the breaking and entering or the location of the building. I told him “A friend of a friend…” had found the house and that it was somewhere in the city.
My dad immediately replied. He hadn’t been in Dundee much during his lifetime, but several years before I was born he had gone there to visit an old school friend. He was twenty one at the time – the same age I was when I visited the house. He had been out drinking with his friend when he’d said that there had been a murder in the area a year earlier and that it would be really creepy to go visit the house. I didn’t need to ask where that house was or what it looked like – he told me and it was exactly the same house I’d been in.
He said that the feeling he had being inside the house was too much to bear. The sense of unwelcome drove him to flee, and his friend remained inside. Shortly after, his friend was arrested for trespassing, and spent the night in jail.
***
A couple of months ago I was sitting at a bar in downtown Daegu. A man was sitting nearby, and talking loudly to no one. He was the kind of guy you normally ignore, except that his accent was unmistakably Scottish. I couldn’t quite place it, though, so I asked him.
“Where’s the accent from?”
“Scotland,” he said.
“Obviously… I mean, where about in Scotland? I’m from St. Andrews.”
“Glasgow, originally. But I went to uni in Dundee and lived in Edinburgh for a bit.”
“Aye? I went to Dundee University, too… Studied literature...”
The old guy laughed. “I think I’m a bit ahead of your time, mate. I was there in 1980. I studied literature, though. It’s good place for it…”
“Where did you live?”
“S______. On ______ Road.” The name of the student residence in which I’d spent my first year at university. The one next door to the Murder House.
But I didn’t think of the Murder House immediately. It had been a long time since that had crossed my mind. What I did find interesting, however, was that he had lived in the same building as me, many years before.
“Hey! I lived there, too. Back in 2003…”
I looked at him, expecting him to have grasped – even through his drunkenness – the staggering coincidence that had just revealed itself. Two men in an unpopular bar in a tiny city in a tiny country thousands of miles from their homeland had just met for the first time, having lived in the same little building, albeit twenty-something years apart.
Instead, he stared into space, his face turning downwards into something more commonly reserved for the hangover. I thought he was about to puke on the bar. He shook his head, then stood up and walked out, and I never saw him again.
(The middle building, below the church... That mass of trees is the "garden"... This was taken weeks later, in the less scary light of day...)
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Names have been changed to protect the people involved, but otherwise this highly unlikely story is all true. I have photos from inside the house, too, but they’re a bit too creepy and invasive to post.
I really enjoyed this story, and I suspect it will stay with me for awhile.
In fact, I know it will.
Thanks. I thought it was time I stopped scaring people away from Asia and started herding them away from Scotland. I do more damage to a country’s tourist industry than terrorism.
Australia, here I come…
You have your work cut out for you. I don’t think the tourists who visit OZ are likely to scare as easily as those that visit Japan, or even Scotland.
Well, I’ll find away. Asian toilets and Scottish murder houses are a good start.
Cree. Pee.
Really well done, David. The coincidences are remarkable…the date, the ages, the man…the end was quite chilling.
It’s weird how coincidences happen. I went to NYC this weekend, and at the end of the evening, we took a cab back to my friend’s place in Brooklyn — a brownstone with four units. He had this dialogue with the cabbie:
CABBIE - I don’t mind going to Brooklyn. My brother lives in Brooklyn.
MY FRIEND- Whereabouts?
CABBIE - On Monroe Place.
– No way! I live on Monroe Place. Which number?
– Nine.
– I live in number nine.
We were being driven home by his neighbor’s brother. What are the chances?
I’m also curious how that house has sat vacant for so long. I think that here, no amount of horror attached to a property would dissuade a developer. “They only moved the headstones!”
Man, that’s creepy.
Speaking of coincidences and Brooklyn, I’ve been reading a lot of Paul Auster recently… He’s always been a favourite of mine, but a guy gave me his first book a few weeks ago, which concerns coincidence more than most books. I was tempted to throw in a few quotes, but I figured I’d already rambled on for 2,000 words so I’d better stop.
Nevertheless, I like his (rehashed/repeated) idea of humans having a collective consciousness that is unrelated to words. Words are the flawed window to the world, he says, that we need to shake. Objects can allow us to view the memories of our bodies and DNA (that second part was my idea based upon a documentary I saw) in ways words never can. In other words, that’s why smells and sights can make you remember things you’d forgotten for decades.
Back to that documentary: they say ants have a group consciousness. Apparently 100 ants will just wither and die, but a million or billion form one giant brain that makes decisions, and every ant there knows exactly what every other ant is thinking…
Which relates to coincidence in as much as we’re all connected, and when we think “that’s weird, what a coincidence!” perhaps we’re just viewing something we don’t understand. Perhaps these coincidence are an example of us scraping the surface of the Matrix.
(Please note: I’m not high. I’ve just been reading too much.)
In wartime, more girls are born than boys. How does that happen if there isn’t a group consciousness?
Or the wisdom of crowds…that if there’s a guess-how-much-the-pig-weighs contest at a fair, and 100 people enter, the average of the 100 guesses will be closer to the actual weight than any individual guess.
Heaven to the raindrop is entering the lake.
We’re getting deep on TNB lately. I shall have to write something about a Kardashian sister…
Apparently, the more sex that’s had, the greater the chance of a girl being conceived. I don’t know if that has bearing on your wartime statistic, but I have read that libidos significantly rise during wartime, what with the ever-constant reminders of mortality.
Really? That’s interesting… Do they have any theories for that?
Basic genetics. All human fetuses are inherently female at first; it’s a chromosomal change that leads to boys during development. This keeps the male:female breeding pool at roughly 1:2, ensuring the proper amount of genetic diversity among the population and avoiding the damaging mutations caused by inbreeding. More girls are always born than boys; a higher amount of sex leads to a higher amount of babies being conceived, which will lead to a higher amount of girls being born.
I don’t have the study in front of me, and this is outside my area of expertise, but I’m told that the percentages were well above chance, much more so that can be explained by the “more sex, more girls” theory Duke suggests, or the Chad-and-Jeremy idea Matt proposes.
A significant increase in the number of girls. Spikes during wartime. Always. The collective organism knows.
Matt - That’s interesting. I especially like the “more sex” part… Those are my two favourite words.
Greg - I’m going to need to get off my lazy ass and look into this. It makes me wonder, then, if a parent could use willpower to influence the gender of the child. Or if the collective will of society then switches to recover the amount of deceased men immediately after a war.
In Korea there is a huge discrepancy in the sex ratio, with far more males. But that’s because it’s common practice to abort female fetuses (correct plural?) in the womb.
everything i’ve read on the web says the exact opposite: that there are 105 male births to every 100 female births during peacetime, that number increasing to 108 to 100 during wartime.
here’s an interesting article that doesn’t talk about “divine providence”:
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-12/why-does-war-breed-more-boys
also, david, it seems that you can slightly increase your chances of having a male baby by increasing the mother’s caloric intake just before conception:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/04/23/gender.diet/index.html
in any case, these changes are the result of individual reactions to outside stimulus (perhaps including chemical signals from other group members like danger! food scarcity! or whatever). “the collective organism” is an expression of individual reactions, not a ghost-like director-entity.
Thanks for the research, Ben. Hopefully these are things I’ll never have to think too hard about… My primary concern in pregnancy right now is making sure there are always plenty of condoms handy. Being a teacher gives me more interaction with children than I could ever handle. If I had to be around them 24 hrs a day I’d shoot myself.
On a similar note:
You might have read in the news that yesterday workers across Korea were sent home at 7pm and power was shut off for the purposes of national procreation… That’s right. The government is all but forcing people to have sex.
Why? Korea has the lowest birthrate on earth. Despite being horribly overpopulated, they don’t want to be entirely overpopulated by old people, and are forcing the young ones to fuck.
who’d want kids when they’re all running around sticking their fingers in your ass?
Exactly. Teach them manners and maybe people will have more of them.
Yeah, this is getting mind bending.
What’s also weird is that I heard the name “Kardashian” today for the first time, a couple of hours ago. I thought, “What the hell is a Kardashian? I should Google it…” but didn’t, and now I just did and it wasn’t very interesting.
And I wonder what impact Google is having upon our collected memories and our individual memories… Because we no longer really need to know anything as long as we have a computer there and a little bit of reasoning. One day our power to remember might just vanish, and that’s when the computers will strike…
Phat covered this beautifully in a comment a few weeks ago…let me see if I can find it…
Here it is. Phat B: “Kim Kardashian had sex with Ray J (Brandy’s brother, from “For The Love Of Ray J” television fame) and it was posted to the internet. She also has a huge ass and rack, and is quite stunning. Her father was Robert Kardashian, famous Los Angeles Defense Attorney who worked the OJ Simpson case, amongst other high profile cases in Hollywood. He died of a heart attack, and former Olympic champion Bruce Jenner married Robert’s widow, and now they have a show, and it’s fucking great. And it all takes place on E! Entertainment television!”
Thanks Greg and Phat. I do my best to stay our of celebrity business, but sometimes it is necessary or unavoidable. I will, however, continue to avoid watching that particular show…
If you need separate bios on Kourtney or Khloe hit me up. I can also send you all of their clippings from my back issues of Teen Beat.
Seriously though, the only time you should make it a point to watch these “famous for being famous” types is when they go on David Letterman, because he doesn’t give a fuck. He berated both Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton something fierce when they were on his couch. His questions come off as “why does America pay attention to you? Aren’t you famous for making a sex tape? Do you have any discernible talent or skillset?” Letterman don’t take no guff in his old age.
That’s really fucking awesome. I don’t hate people for being pointless celebrities, but I do hate people for caring about their lives. Or for thinking that they’re special because they had a famous daddy and then sucked dick on camera.
David,
This story is so sinister that it has disturbed me on more than one level.
I don’t like that I can feel the crushing damp feeling of not being welcome in the house.
Don’t put stuff in my head like that again.
Put a warning up for me so I won’t read stuff like this again.
Other people can read it, just warn me.
Thanks.
Sorry, Irene. I’ll warn you next time, although this is probably the creepiest story I’ve got in my head.
Damn it. I’d planned on spending the day doing research on the novel I’m working on, but now I think I’m going to have to spend it researching mass-murderers in Dundee.
Well done, sir. Very creepy tale. And the odd level of synchronous coincidences just adds to the overall atmosphere.
Matt - As I pointed out to my dad a while back, Dundee - or Scotland in generally - doesn’t have many murders in its history… Or, not many planned murders. And not many mass murders.
People die in drunken fights everyday, and sometimes someone gets stabbed on the street, but there aren’t many stories like this. That book was pretty slim and sold well because people were so shocked by its brutality.
Eeeeek! This was a creepy story David! I was expecting a story about the dentist with that title!
Nicely written with enough suspense to put a shiver up my spine..
I do love reading your stories, scary or otherwise. Watch out Australia, indeed!
I’d never write about the dentist… I’m terrified of those evil bastards. The first time I went the guy drilled into my teeth without anesthetic. Even with anesthetic it’s still hurts so much I can’t bring myself back.
I’m going to Australia full of optimism, but I’m a magnet for weird stuff, so who knows…
very creepy! the ghosthunters should pay the house a visit and do an evp session.
i love reading and watching scary stuff, but i’m sure if i were really there, i’d have run screaming in the other direction.
Yeah, I’m sure they would. I hate shows like that because the idea of ghosts freaks me out way too much. But I’m sure they would find plenty to talk about.
Wow!!! I thought I had some ghostly tales to tell. This is one of the creepiest, with the vines in the house, etc…
Yeah, it’s certainly a nasty one. The house was beautiful, though, in some creepy enchanted way.
Yeah, creepy is the operative word here. Not only the dusty relics left behind in the house itself, but the oppressive, I-want-you-out feeling of the house itself.
Eerie, dude. Just eerie.
To be honest I found the objects the creepiest… I mean, glasses and teacups left to sit for twenty-seven years? A walking stick left waiting by the front door… That’s such a human element, the sort of stuff that really sticks with you. I mean, writing this brought back the feelings I had in the house, but ever since then I’ve never shaken the visual images.
I can see how you would.
Curious; I was planning a blog in my head and I was thinking about how I’d use a line about how I’ve never forgotten a certain image I saw once. Just as I was thinking that, the email notification for your comment came up.
Please, Universe, continue.
Haha, the universe is trying to alert you to something. When you notice a coincidence it means something beyond the normal level of perception is at work. Something needs uncovered. That means you must write this blog and see where it takes you.
I, um…
No, no.
Not that blog.
I sense a screenplay in the works.
This beats me staking out the LaBianca house on the fortieth anniversary of the Manson murders by miles and miles — or meters, as it were.
I suppose it would make a decent movie. If I could raise $50 maybe it would be the next “Paranormal Activity.”
And as I’ve said, it was the fact that the house was left that way - exactly as the people had left it. Staking out the LaBianca house is awful, but there’s something terrible about accidentally stumbling upon an anniversary, and especially travelling back through time by being surrounded by those relics.
Spooky. And so weird about your dad.
Wonder what will happen to the house. Is it for sale cheap?
We had some theories… I guess that it’s just been forgotten, or that it’s in a legal limbo. Maybe those old people never had relatives, or they couldn’t be found. Maybe the place has such a bad vibe that no one ever went inside and still thought they could buy it…
I just don’t understand. You’d think money would gloss over everything. I mean, at least someone might have bought it and tricked someone else into renting it from them. Or turned it into offices or something.
Indeed.
Did you ever google the address?
Yeah, but not much came up. Nothing, in fact, which would make it about the only place in the area with no Google history… Even finding out about the murders would have been near impossible without that coincidental book appearance.
Maybe it’s lost in the Google universe. It’s the same street on which many famous people did many famous things.
I’m with Duke. When do I get to see it on the big screen?
Maybe one day I’ll go back and take a camera in for the night…
Poe would envy your story and the fact that it is based on truth would drive him to his bottle laudanum. It is a small world too as the saying goes. My brother ran into a woman in a bar in Alaska (not Sarah) who was researching a relative of ours who my father thought was in the German SS. Nazi relatives, murder houses, who knows where they will turn up? Great stuff amigo.
Thanks David. I envy Poe, so I’m sure we’d have something to talk about. I’m also a raging alcoholic, so we’d get along just fine.
Indeed, the “small world” thing gets me all the time. I’m constantly surprised by things that should surprise me. After all, with the internet and cheap flights, the world is pretty little nowadays.
So that means you approve of the “waxing Poe-etic” line? Ironically, the day I posted that was Poe’s birthday. SSE again. Or, as we call it stateside, The Smithsonian.
Yes, I absolutely approve! I saw that and thought it was pretty clever. How weird, though, that it was Poe’s birthday…
An interesting story about Poe’s birthday, from the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-naw-poe-grave20-2010jan20,0,3880555.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+latimes/news/nationworld/nation+(L.A.+Times+-+National+News)
I saw that. I was reminded of the “woman in black” who used to visit Rudolph Valentino’s grave every year on the anniversary of his death. She wore a veil that hid her face — yet another dramatic touch.
In Korea there is an anonymous donation made to an orphanage in Seoul every year. The amount is pretty impressive each time, but this year it stopped. I guess either these people are dying, getting sick, or the world is becoming too horrible a place for them to continue what they do.
Let’s hope that attitude doesn’t spread to include us.
great story, david.
Thanks Ben, I’ll make sure the next one doesn’t give people nightmares.
fuck ‘em. giving people nightmares is what it’s all about. rock on in your strange nightmare country.
Thanks, man. Maybe I will… Only it would have to be fiction because I’m more or less done with the whole “breaking into ghost house” shit.
I visited a prison a few weeks ago in Seoul. The Japanese used to use it to torture Koreans, and it’s pretty disturbing. I took a photo of my friend in the execution room and there was a weird shape appeared on his should in the photo.
But that’s not very scary. I don’t have many scary ones to tell, so I’ll just stick with “Asia’s so weird…” stuff.
yeah, you gotta go with what works, “in the final analysis,” as my dad always says. i don’t know why he always says that. have you ever read anything by w.g. sebald? i think you might like him. it’s slow moving but very creepy and smart and beautiful… essentially he’s an overeducated highly depressed german guy riddled with war guilt who wanders around europe musing about places, buildings, ruins, books, libraries, the way the past hangs over and permeates everything like an unseen poisonous cloud which essentially controls our actions… not as gothic as that, very rational, but still… pretty amazing stuff…. basically he sees the whole world as a kind of haunted house… your story reminded me of him… his book austerlitz is one of my all-time favorites. i imagine it’s not exactly a bestseller in korea, but if you stumble on it, you might want to give it a try (if you haven’t already).
http://www.amazon.com/Austerlitz-Modern-Library-Paperbacks-Winfried/dp/0375756566/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264045278&sr=8-1
also the story “the black house” by patricia highsmith came to mind. another of my favorites. very different from yours but similar in that, uh… it’s about a house.
Thanks, Ben, I’ll make a note to read either of those when I get back to an English speaking country. Or if either of them come through my little 2nd hand bookstore, I’ll sweep them out of circulation for a bit and read them myself.
The idea of a guy with war guilt, musing the history in buildings is very interesting to me. I’ve always been fascinated by history and its connection to physical objects in that manner. It can be creepy, but certainly interesting. The town I’m from - St. Andrews - is mired in thousands of years of history. There are few places you can go without someone having been executed there and some legend haunts it…
Having said that, it’s a very cheerful place in many respects.
we have the exact opposite situation out here; it often seems like there’s no history at all. just some people decided to built some stucco shit in the middle of the desert. there’s movie history but that’s just fantasy, it doesn’t matter or connect to anything, and nobody knows it anyway… i don’t think anyone i know even knows who, say, irving thalberg was, or name two movies marilyn monroe was in. not that’s it’s important, really… just sayin’. it’s always a little unreal to go someplace “historical” and try to imagine a real past. i just kinda stand there and see scenes from bad movies in my head. there’s not really any point to this comment, but i’m posting it anyway.
That must be such a weird feeling… I love being around old buildings and feeling the history of millions of lives emanate from the walls.
But history isn’t always human… The lay of the land holds far more intrigue for me than the boring shit men and women do.
Well, they shit, which is boring; but I’m very wrapped up in human history, and I love film history as well. I don’t see it as fantasy. Fantasies were being concocted, yes, but the workers responsible were very real.
But that’s just me, you know.
Yeah, me too. I was exaggerating ridiculously in my last comment. Not sure why… I am an entirely different person from day to day.
Film history is of some interest to me, but my true passion is literary history… I guess if that Film Studies course wasn’t all booked out when I tried to take it back in 2003, things might have gone differently…
Lit history is also great. The lives of artists are of tremendous interest to me generally.
Yeah, I find it tremendously depressing to think of lost art and literature - the stuff that is destroyed. Like the fucking Nazis… How much stuff did they ruin? We’ll never really know… And, for example, we’re lucky that when Kafka wanted all his work burned it was never burned. And thus the world has Kafka.