olds
Truly bizarre, Billy.
Wed Mar 02, 2022 7:07

But what in the name of Barnum is a "Boyer Cleric"? (I have my suspicions, but they aren't fit to mention in this forum.)

Your story reminds me of another similar one about the Lizzie Borden bed-and-breakfast/museum in Fall River, Massachusetts. (This was decades back when I was researching a work about Ms. Borden that never saw the light of day.) The bed-and-breakfast was the allegedly "haunted" house where the murders actually occurred. (I believe it is still up and running.) I checked in and was assigned to spend the night in the bedroom where Ms. Borden's stepmother, Abby, had been bludgeoned to death with the infamous ax. (Precisely 18 whacks to the head.)

What struck me (oh, sorry) about my visit were the other folks who stayed the night. They all clearly were, as you might have described them, "Borden Clerics" who did not exactly hide their chagrin and disappointment that I, an apostate and non-Cleric, was the one who had been chosen to enjoy the experience of sleeping in the "murder bedroom."

In any event, the next morning, when we all gathered for a breakfast featuring pastries in the shape of an ax, everyone but my embarrassed self had a story to relate about their overnight experience. While I had been sleeping the boring sleep of the dead, they each and all had been "visited" by some inexplicable "force" which not only had disrupted their sleep, but against which they had to "fight." When one of them had tried to get out of bed, she was unable to do so because this "force" was holding her down. Another, as I recall, had attempted to take a photo of this same "force" with his camera, but the camera had failed to work. However, come daylight, when he tried to use the camera again, it worked.

I have no idea whether these folks were anti-Communist Republicans because the subject of political ideology never came up for discussion. What united them, as far as I could discern, wasn't politics, but what I will call supernaturalism or paranormalism. I will only say that I felt like a pariah among them, an outsider on the outside looking in.

Which is to say, exactly how I typically feel.








  • Wyatt Earp's Death Bed....... — B.J., Tue Mar 01 2022 10:50
    ... was set up in a small guest house behind the so called Boyer 'ranch house'. The death bed was definitely the type of bed one would find in the 1920's California motor court hotels. However I have never... more
    • Dibs — Erik, Fri Mar 11 2022 20:42
      PIE? LOl...
    • Re: Wyatt Earp's Death Bed....... — Dan Brown, Wed Mar 02 2022 7:58
      I am highly impressed that Albert Behan would be able identify Earp's death bed. The pistol auctioned off as Earp's, after Boyer's death, had had its serial numbers filed off. I reckon Earp had some free... more
    • Truly bizarre, Billy. — olds, Wed Mar 02 2022 7:07
      • Macabre Olds? — B.J., Fri Mar 04 2022 23:18
        I’m not sure if you would have asked to sleep in Wyatt Earp’s death bed? I think that any man asking for that particular accommodation would have been immediately assigned to Boyer’s gay alert radar... more
        • What can I say? — olds, Tue Mar 08 2022 5:50
          I do my best work in the dark. Or so the rumor. No voodoux or seances though, at least that I can recall, but then, my powers of recollection, among so many other things, ain't what they used to be.
          • You met Oprah — erik, Fri Mar 11 2022 21:01
            I didn't. Some of my colleagues did. There was a fire in a senior care facility and, just like Wyatt Earp in Lake's book, they assisted in the safe evacuation of all the seniors. They were invited... more