Three (Part Two)

I believe that the scariest place on Earth, is your imagination. Much of the supernatural stuff we see on TV and in books leave the ultimate decision--to believe or not--to the audience; to us. Since it's Halloween, that time of the year "paranormal experts" take advantage of our kindergarten fears, I'll give you three scary things that might actually be true.

1. Backmasking.

Would you believe that your idol up in lights, rocking it out center stage, might have actually written what he was singing with the devil holding his other hand? "Backmasking" is just a fancy term for playing a track in reverse. Have you ever owned a cassette or a Walkman? When a song is in fast forward, it sounds chipmunked, right?  Since backmasking is usually done with the track slowed down (so the listener could make sense of the syllables in reverse), it comes out slow and deep; like a funeral march. Partnered with Satanic lyrics, listening to a backmasked song is sure to chill your  eardrums.

Here is a harmless case of backmasking.

Missy Elliot is a hip-hop legend. Forget about Nicki, this girl is a natural. Listen closely to the chorus. After "I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it" are a couple of lines that sound like "It's yer from the nepa vanette"--It's actually "I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it."--backwards.

Now here is a classic case of backmasking.

Led Zeppelin was to rock, what Missy Elliot is to hip-hop: a legend. In fact, some time in the 70's, they were dubbed as the "Biggest band in the world." Selling tens of millions of albums worldwide, they had enough money for a private jet! They rented whole sections of high-class hotels which they (most of the time) trashed. In 2009, a sum 20 million requests for a reunion show was counted online, placing the band in the Guinness Book of World Records for the "Highest Demand for Tickets for One Music Concert." This track is from an album that sold 32 million copies worldwide. There are also messages like what you'll read, in songs of The Beatles and many other bands.

Anyway, here it goes.

When played normally, you'd hear:

“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now

It’s just a spring clean for the May queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on”

But backmasked, it goes like:

“Oh here’s to my sweet Satan.

The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan.
He will give those with him 666.
There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan."

If you really like to hear the backmasked version, it isn't hard to find on the net. The band and their label denied intentionally putting it there with a statement: “Our turntables only play in one direction--forwards.” 

One Satanic line maybe a coincidence. But two? Three? You be the judge.

2. "Based on a true story."

Horror movies that claim they're "based on a true story," are dime-a-dozen. In fact, the phrase has become so cliche that if anybody in the industry uses it for advertising, their work is automatically  ripped as a loose and exaggerated account of some events that actually happened and some events that didn't. It's like having a Kardashian publicity.

But some movies broke the mold--and did so without exaggeration. These particular flicks brought the audience a true, hidden sense of reality absent in today's X Factor and Big Brother.

That's Ed Gein. He inspired movies: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, Deranged, and In The Light of The Moon. Far as murderers go, he's one of the most famous in history. He was born in 1906 and only had his mother take care of him. Their relationship was (theatrically) portrayed in Psycho. They lived like hermits: like they were the only people in the world. After her death in 1945, he began to withdraw himself from everyone. Little was known of him until he allegedly exhumed corpses from a local cemetery in 1957 and was suspected in connection of the disappearance of a local store owner. The police later got a search warrant for his home.

Upon entering Ed's house, they walked into a horrifying scene. They found nine masks made of human skin, human skin covering several chair seats, a belt made of female nipples, two decapitated heads, and several female heads with the tops sawed off.  Ed wore these masks made of skin to pretend he was a female, thus was born Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Here's another "true story."

What you see here, is the house featured in the movie: The Haunting in Connecticut. A family, the Snedekers moved in it to live closer to a health center, where a member was being treated for cancer. The family later claimed that it was plagued by some kind of demonic presence. Mortuary equipment was discovered in the basement, and it was later found that the house had been a funeral home. Carmen, the mother, described the demons: "One of the demons was very thin, with high cheekbones, long black hair and pitch black eyes. Another had white hair and eyes, wore a pinstriped tuxedo, and his feet were constantly in motion.^" 

The house was later examined. According to a write-up in 2009 by NBC, the morticians that worked in the mortuary were allegedly involved in necromancy and/or necrophilia with the corpses, and the room where the two youngest children stayed was previously the show room for caskets; down the hall was where bodies were prepared for viewing. Lorraine Warren later stated that, "In the master bedroom, there was a trap door where the coffins were brought up, and during the night, you would hear that chain hoist, as if a coffin were being brought up. But when Ed went to check he found two women down there dancing around in circles and singing; when he walked towards them, they disappeared." In response to the film, Lorraine said that the actual case was "much, much scarier than any movie could ever be," and that the film was "very, very loosely based" on their investigation of the house. (Source: Wikipedia)

The Exorcist (see Roland Doe), and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, (see Anneliese Michel), are also based on true stories. Those two are the scariest movies of all time in my opinion.

3. "Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John? Brother John?"

Do you know of sleep paralysis? I do. That state, when your mind is awake but you can't move a muscle. It feels like being strapped to a brick in the middle of the ocean. The more you panic, the more you couldn't move. It feels like something heavy is pressing down on the body. Moving your toes would feel like lifting sacks of cement. Hearing also becomes impaired; you won't be able to hear anything but some recurring, wave-like bass pulses that sound like they come from inside your ear: much like what you hear when you're yawning.

Vivid, isn't it? Well for years, I thought I was alone in this experience. Little did I know, it has been around since the ancient times. Guy de Maupassant even mentioned it in his novel, The Horla.

What I described above is nothing compared to what's likely to happen.

"The Old Hag" phenomenon, unlike the apparition of a white lady or a vampire, is recounted the same from culture to culture and country to country. Dr. David Hufford, Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine, conducted a research on what the people of Newfoundland called "The Old Hag." He divided experiencing her presence in four parts: awakening;  hearing and/or seeing something come into the room and approach the bed; being pressed on the chest or strangled; and being unable to move or cry out. It sounds pretty much like the Succubus.

Below is an account of a friend of a man named William James. 

"It was about September of 1884 …. Suddenly I felt something come into the room and stay close to my bed. It remained only a minute or two. I did not recognize it by any ordinary sense, and yet there was a horrible ‘sensation’ connected with it. It stirred something more at the roots of my being than any ordinary perception. The feeling had something of the quality of a very large tearing vital pain spreading chiefly over the chest, but within the organism — and yet the feeling was not pain so much as abhorrence. At all events, something was present with me, and I knew its presence far more surely than I had ever known the presence of any fleshly living creature. I was conscious of its departure as of its coming; an almost instantaneously swift going through the door, and the ‘horrible sensation’ disappeared."

Scientists say that it's just the body going from the dream state to wake state that causes sleep paralysis. I sure hope they're right.