How Many Active Serial Killers Are There?
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Jason Murphy is a novelist, screenwriter, and content creator. Before the age of 18, he was accused of practicing black magic like 3 times. By adults. WTF?
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I have a confession. I have only seen ONE Fast/Furious movie. I saw the first one and when I learned they had endeavored to make another one to answer all of the dangling questions and unresolved thematic work, I thought, “What!? Are they crazy?” So having not seen any of the 9 or 10 other ones, I have to use my imagination to know just what these automotive spectacles are like.
I imagine they’re a lot like Helge Meyer and his ghost Camaro.
This guy … he was watching the atrocities and suffering that spilled out of the conflict in Yugoslavia in the 90s and thought, “Well, this is a perfect opportunity to be the GOAT.”
Cue the awesome music. Helge tears the cover off of the car in the old garage. He grabs a welding torch and some metal … then we get the “armoring a car” montage. The camera pans over the gleaming hood, over the impenetrable bumper, and the rubber duck wedged into the grill.
CLOSE-UP on Helge’s smoking cigarette. He starts the engine with a growl and a roar. And then he’s off, delivering food and medicine to the refugees of this awful war.
In the most bad ass way possible.
https://drivetribe.com/p/ghost-car-a-1979-camaro-that-was-SgUwhuvHTjeXf4J0RNCy9Q
https://www.badassoftheweek.com/ghostcamaro
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/ghost-car.html
As an old school comic book nerd, I’m a sucker for the spandex set. And Helge Meyer? He’s the closest thing to a real superhero that I can think of. Give me the Ghost Camaro franchise. I would buy the toy. I would put the Ghost Camaro on my desk.
I’ve seen a few films touch on the aftermath of what happened in Yugoslavia in the 90s. I don’t mean to make light of it, but the real story here isn’t the Serbs and Croats engaging in unspeakably awful combat. The real story people should hear is of one guy risking everything to help some children in his really fucking cool car.
The Most Haunted House in London
I don’t believe in ghosts. Please don’t take that personally. It’s cool if you do. I’m fascinated by the paranormal. Much like Fox Mulder, I want to believe. Maybe Sir Robert Warboys did, too. Sir Robert took the challenge that so many other non-believers have taken. He heard salacious rumors and went up to knock on the door. He went into the dark cave. He took the walk in the forbidden woods.
I like to think that people who want to believe are the ones most likely to take these dares. If you knew it was fake- without a shadow of a doubt - why would you even bother staying in a creepy old house? Just to be right? I think you’d just dismiss it and move on.
https://www.theghostattic.com/haunted-england/50-berkeley-square/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Berkeley_Square
These little ghost stories are all cut from the same cloth. Have you ever read any EC Comics? Those old horror stories were often violent and bizarre, but they all followed the same beats.
Someone kind of awful commits a crime. Maybe that’s just the crime of pride. There’s a hint of a gruesome legend. Our protagonist realizes, all too late, that the monsters are real. He screams! And his body is found. Witnesses can only speculate as to what happened, but the legend persists. It grows stronger, waiting for the next arrogant dummy.
There are HOW MANY active serial killers?
What would you guess? 5? 10?
Nope! Anywhere from 25 to as many as 50!
Listen, I don’t want to venerate these guys. The propensity for lonely people and a certain subsection of horror movie fans to elevate serial killers into heroes is just baffling. I once met a guy at the bar who could name every major killer and recite statistics as though they were baseball players. I would have rather he’d been an actual serial killer.
That said, the idea that someone is out there repeatedly getting away with murder is both scary and compelling. As someone who is painfully aware of the ubiquity of surveillance in our society, I can’t help but wonder how hard it is to get away with it. There are cameras everywhere. Yet there are still serial killers they haven’t caught? I feel like if I leave the house with my fly down, all of TikTok is going to know about it.
https://www.grunge.com/43759/terrifying-serial-killers-still-loose/
http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Serial%20Killer%20Information%20Center/Project%20Description.htm
As a writer, serial killer stories are somewhat tired for me. I’m not sure how many other variations of that story there are to tell. There’s the “good guy” serial killer of Dexter, the killer who kills to satisfy some demon in Fallen, and the gritty, realistic portrayal in something like Monster.
But how does a serial killer operate in a surveillance state? That might make for an interesting story…
Can you survive falling through a storm cloud?
Fluffy. White. Benign. Admit it. You’ve let your guard down. You just walk along, blithely unaware that clouds are trying to murder you. I’m not talking about Jean Jacket, either.
I’ve flown through thunderstorms on commercial airlines. Honestly, the first time is harrowing. You can see the lightning right outside your window and it makes you feel very small, trapped in a metal tube, rocketing through hell. Even from that perspective, you don’t think of clouds as inherently threatening, right? You think, “Oh, I’ll get a little wet and cold, then we’ll be fine.”
William Rankin would beg to differ. When he was forced to eject from his fighter plane while in the middle of a massive cumulonimbus, he found himself surrounded by colossal bolts of lightning, hail, and enough rain to almost drown him.
A great element to a horror story is something deadly that’s been there all along, something you thought was just up there being pretty.
It’s unnerving that something so horrifying and HUGE can be so close to us and so innocuous looking. I mean, sure, no one thinks that being in a massive thunderstorm is going to be a walk in the park, but when you reveal it’s a man-eating hellscape in the sky, drifting right above you, that changes things.
From another perspective, this is a really surprising survival story. You’d think after ejecting from a flaming fighter jet that the story couldn’t get any more harrowing.
The Strangerous Channel Updates
The Strangerous is working on a podcast! I’ve mentioned this before, but we' have guests and topics lined up. It’s shaping up to be a lot of fun. Any guests you’d like to hear?
While Modern Rogue has slowed production over the last year, we’re still turning out some fun, interesting videos. You’re unfamiliar with the Modern Rogue? Well, here’s when we got in trouble with the fire department:
Oh! And you knew I was a novelist, right? I’m sure you did. I’m kind of annoying about it. I’ve been working on the 3rd book in my horror-comedy series, Occultex. If you like Ghostbusters, but with way more weirdness and swearing, you might like the idiots of the Occultex Team.
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Even More Strange and Dangerous!
Thanks for reading our online newsletter! Here’s just a bit of our favorite things we’ve found lately. See ya next week!
Our favorites from the week:
When discussing the haunted events at 50 Berkeley Square and the encounter of Sir Robert Warboys our friend @futurewolfington had this to say:
I’m always impressed when I see a short film that’s able to set a mood and deliver a scare. The challenge with a short is telling your story within restrictive parameters. On the other hand, you’re freed from the explanations and backstory required in a longer work. These filmmakers had about 6 minutes and they delivered.
Have you seen the Bulgarian Kukeri? In order to ward off evil spirits, there is a tradition to dress up in elaborate costumes and masks and dance around. Would it be gross cultural appropriation if we non-Bulgarians started doing that, too? I too have evils I need to get rid of and I think demon Chewbacca is just the costume to do it.
