Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (59 page)

GOOGLE SUGGESTS…

Have you ever typed something into the Internet search engine Google, only to have it complete your sentence and offer you a list of things you may—or may not—be looking for? That’s called the “Google Suggests” function, and its suggestions are based on what people search for most often. Based on these recent actual examples, people are searching for some pretty strange things
.

Y
ou enter: “WHERE IS.” Google suggests…
• where is
Chuck Norris
• where is
Lady Gaga from

• where is
the Geico Gecko from

• where is
your appendix

• where is
my refund

• where is
Dubai

• where is
my mind

You enter: “IS IT POSSIBLE.” Google suggests…

• is it possible
to curve a bullet

• is it possible
to get pregnant without intercourse

• is it possible
to sneeze with your eyes open

• is it possible
to lick your elbow

• is it possible
to have purple eyes

You enter: “DO Z” Google suggests…

• do z
ombies exist

• do z
ombies poop

• do z
ebras make noise

• do z
oo hair parlor

You enter: “UNCLE JIM” Google suggests
…

• uncle jim
’s worm farm

• uncle jim
’s worms

• uncle jim
my’s dirty basement

• uncle jim
my’s licky things

Google’s unofficial company motto: “Don’t be evil.”

You enter: “MY PARA” Google suggests
…

• my para
dise lyrics

• my para
keet is scared of me

• my pyra
mid

• my para
keet is puffed up

• my para
noid next door neighbor

• my para
sites

You enter: “POOPY” Google suggests…

• poopy
time fun shapes

• poopy
joe

• poopy
savanna il

• poopy
’s bar and grill

• poopy
diaper

• poopy
face tomato nose

You enter: “IS IT TRUE THAT” Google suggests…

• is it true that
Miley Cyrus is pregnant

• is it true that
Lady Gaga is a man

• is it true that
when you sneeze someone is talking about you

• is it true that
Lil Wayne died

• is it true that
everyone has a twin

You enter: “DOES YOUR TONGUE” Google suggests…

• does your tongue
grow back

• does your tongue
have hair

• does your tongue
need healing

• does your tongue
piercing hurt

• does your tongue
have bones

You enter: “TOM CRUISE IS” Google suggests…

• Tom Cruise is
nuts

• Tom Cruise is
short

• Tom Cruise is
a midget

• Tom Cruise is
an idiot

• Tom Cruise is
dead

Britain’s National Health Service granted a prescription for Viagra to a convicted sex offender
.

THE HAUNTING, PART I

We scoured the annals of paranormal investigations to find real proof of ghostly activity. There wasn’t any…until we found this bizarre case. You know how, during a horror movie, you always think, “Don’t go in the attic”? Here’s why
.

F
ROM BAD TO WORSE
In November 1988, 26-year-old Jackie Hernandez was looking for a safe harbor to land in after her marriage fell apart. With a toddler in her arms and another baby on the way, Jackie found a run-down bungalow in the busy port town of San Pedro, California, just south of Los Angeles. As Jackie settled in to her new life, she noticed that something in the 90-year-old house just didn’t seem right. Things started happening: The television would turn on all by itself. Pencils leapt out of a pencil holder. Her cat would chase shadows…literally. At one point, Jackie even thought she saw a disembodied head floating near her attic.

She thought she was imagining things—chalking it up to the stress of separating from her husband, being in a new place with few friends, and being pregnant. Besides, even if she wanted to, she couldn’t afford to move again. So Jackie had her baby and maintained an uneasy truce with…whatever it was. But by late summer 1989, the activity started getting out of control.

FOUL SPIRITS

The house took on a nasty stench. Weird sounds emanated from the attic. Late one night, she looked into her baby daughter’s bedroom and saw what seemed to be a “grayish, decaying” old man sitting cross-legged on the bed. He looked right at her, and then disappeared. A few days later, she saw the other ghost again: the floating, disembodied head. It could only be seen near the attic, and it too looked decaying. And it had mean, penetrating eyes.

Jackie’s neighbor, Susan Castenada, was there the night that an orange, viscous liquid started oozing out of a light switch, and tiny balls of light flew through the house. “You need someone to come in here and help you,” she said. Jackie said she could handle it, but Castenada made a call anyway. She telephoned a UCLA parapsychologist that she’d seen on television, Dr. Barry Taff.

In 2009 Connecticut police raided a home to break up an alleged canary-fighting operation
.

THE ATTIC, PT. I

On August 8, 1989, Dr. Taff’s team arrived at the house, including professional cameraman Barry Conrad and his friend, photographer Jeff Wheatcraft. A former elementary school principal, Wheatcraft was a skeptic but came along because Conrad told him it might be fun.

While the video camera rolled, Jackie told her story. The team was fascinated by her account but a little frustrated that none of this so-called activity was happening when the camera was rolling. So Wheatcraft decided to check out the attic. He went into the laundry room, climbed up onto the washer, opened the trap door in the ceiling, and pulled himself up. He later said he felt a little unsettled up there, as if someone were watching him. He started snapping some pictures while the others waited below. “Suddenly, without warning, all of us heard a scream,” recalled Conrad. “Jeff bolted down from the attic! He held out his trembling hands: ‘My camera! It pulled the camera from my hands!’”
Now
the team was excited. And Jackie, though relieved that they finally believed her, was a little put off by their enthusiasm. But Taff reassured her that they were there to help. “It’s fearful of something,” she told them. “It doesn’t want you to be here.”

THE ATTIC, PT. II

Whatever
it
was in the attic, it was making a lot of noise. It sounded, they said, like someone was stomping around up there. But regardless of the noise, Wheatcraft wanted his $1,200 camera back, and Conrad wanted to film a ghost. They climbed back up. Looking around with a flashlight, they noted that there was no other way in or out and that the room was empty, except for an old, wooden fruit box in the corner. Conrad started filming, but his camera went dead. He replaced the batteries, but it still wouldn’t work. Meanwhile, Wheatcraft found his camera lens—it was behind the trap door, standing on its end, as if it had been placed there. It didn’t have a scratch. But where was the rest of the camera? He finally saw it…sitting in the fruit box. How’d it get there? He didn’t know, but he slowly reached in and retrieved it.

Both men were ready to get out of there, but first Wheatcraft wanted to flash off a few shots. Just as he took the third picture, a foul stench overtook them. “It’s behind me,” he said. Then, he said, something pushed him hard in the back, nearly causing him to topple down through the trap door opening. As the two men scrambled down, they noticed three large glowing lights in the attic. Once they reached the safety of the kitchen, Conrad’s video camera started working again. They didn’t need any more convincing. There was definitely
something
in that house. And it was angry.

The Pillsbury Bake-Off has a higher Grand Prize cash value ($1 million) than the Olympic Gold Medal ($25,000) and the Pulitzer Prize ($10,000) put together
.

THE ATTIC, PT. III

Over the next month, the activity intensified—doors and cabinets opened and closed. The TV suddenly turned on and blared at full volume. Pictures fell from the walls. Lights and shadows passed through the house. Conrad spent a lot of time trying to film what he could, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once, so he missed most of the activity. One night when he wasn’t there, Jackie told Conrad that the ghost pinned her to the floor for several minutes. Then it threw a full can of Pepsi at her head. She couldn’t take it anymore. On September 4, she called Conrad and left a frantic message: “It takes my fear and gains energy from it. The more scared I get, the stronger it gets.” Conrad and Wheatcraft, along with another photographer, Gary Boehm, showed up around 1:00 a.m. and found Jackie and her two children waiting for them on the front porch.

The men wanted to go in, but Jackie thought they’d come to get her out of there, and pleaded with them not to go into the house. They went in anyway. Boehm was anxious to check out this attic he’d heard so much about. Wheatcraft was hesitant but willing—he hadn’t been back since the night he was pushed. Conrad refused to take his camera up there, so Wheatcraft and Boehm went up into the attic without him.

At first, they didn’t feel anything weird in the dark room, so they decided to leave. Then came three loud snaps, followed by a muffled scream from Wheatcraft. Boehm snapped some pictures so he could see. The flash revealed Wheatcraft pinned face-first against the slanted wall with his legs wrapped awkwardly around a support beam. Jackie yelled from below: “Come down! Come down! I told you what this thing was capable of!”

HANGED OUT TO DRY

Boehm rushed over and discovered that Wheatcraft had a length of clothesline wrapped around his neck. He was actually
hanging
on a nail from one of the rafters. And he was completely unresponsive. Boehm couldn’t untie the knot but was able to bend the nail and get his friend down and out of the attic. Finally back in the kitchen, Wheatcraft regained his senses but had a nasty headache and severe rope burns around his neck. The clothesline was tied in what they later determined to be a “seaman’s knot.”

The final straw came later that night, when Jackie discovered a bit of the strange, orange goop that had come out of the walls…on her baby’s forehead. On several previous occasions, she’d told the spirit: “I demand you stay away from my kids!” And until that night, it had. But now, according to Jackie, “It was saying, ‘I can do what I want to.’” She knew as long as she stayed there, she’d never be able to escape whatever it was. It even haunted her sleep: In a recurring nightmare, Jackie was a young man, standing on the San Pedro docks. She was hit on the head with a lead pipe and then held underneath the water. Jackie could feel the life being pulled out of her as she struggled to wake up. She knew that this ghost was telling her how he had been murdered.

TIME TO LEAVE

The next day, Jackie started looking for a new place to live, but she was nearly broke and had to tough it out for a few more weeks. Meanwhile, the investigation continued (although Wheatcraft never set foot in the house again). Reviewing his video from the previous night, Conrad saw balls of light flying above Wheatcraft’s head. They seemed to follow him around the house.