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It's that time of the year. Let's talk [Scary Stuff]
The Ender
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Supernatural claims haven't scared me much since I've grown-up and stopped believing in anything supernatural. Games & movies can still certainly give me a cheap moment of fright (...though, honestly, I think the most effective jump-scare I've had in a while was a certain conventional scene in 28 Days Later).
Reading or hearing about what people can and have done, though, given the opportunity to do it? That probably will always keep me awake with the lights on some nights.
It's Halloween, and I've heard plenty of people talk about how all of the 'scary' has been taken out of Halloween. You want scary? Let's talk scary.
Let's head back almost a decade, to 1996, to the most milquetoast of milquetoast communities: Boulder, Colorado. The Ramseys - a millionaire family that enrolls their six year old daughter in state beauty pageants - appears to have a bad HBO drama situation unfold on them: the mother, Patricia Ramsey, can't find said six year old daughter - JonBenet - and discovers a ransom note. The police are called. Nobody can find the daughter even after a search of the home. Detectives arrive. statements are taken. Preparations are made with hostage negotiators.
This facade shatters when skeptical officers lead Mr. Ramsey on a thorough inspection of the home's basement, where JonBenet's bound and gagged body is found in the family wine cellar, hidden in a corner under a blanket. She has been struck on the head with a paintbrush handle hard enough to fracture the skull and strangled with twine. She hasn't been raped.
A lot of the stories I'm going to talk about in this thread are scary mostly because they are not only brutal, but unsolved; this story is scary because it is solved but we pretend that it's not. We know that the Ramseys almost certainly killed their own daughter: the ransom note that Patricia 'discovered' was written by her, according to every expert that has ever examined it (not only is it in her handwriting, it was written by a pen found in the home). The Ramsey's have consustently lied about their activities, their daughter's activities and their son's activities during the morning that the murder took place (the Ramsey's were feeding JonBenet and their son pineapple earlier in the morning; they claim they 'don't remember' doing this; they claim that their son was asleep the entire time, but his fingerprints are all over the kitchen). Based on an objective review of the physical evidence alone, a Grand jury indicted the Ramseys of child abuse & murder of their daughter - but the district attorney, a friend of John Ramsey, refused to sign the indictment and had it sealed, pretending that the verdict was inconclusive. Detectives that have reviewed the evidence alone have almost universally concluded that the Ramseys were guilty of the crime, but most of them doubted their own conclusions after meeting the Ramseys and having John's silver tongue stuck in their ears.
Seven years ago, a man & woman killed their 6 year old child and attempted to lead the police on a wild goose chase about a kidnapping that never occurred. But, because they are wealthy, clean cut and polite, we pretend that it's a mystery. It's more important, when the chips are down, to be courteous to a smiling businessman than to protect children from his wrath. I find that scary.
But that's not random savagery; John Ramsey wouldn't have just killed you in a parking lot and dumped the body in a ditch (or so the thinking goes). He's a monster at large, but at least he's not a phantom.
Let's go to Lake Herman Road in California, on the 20th of December, 1968. Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday are parked in an American Motors Rambler owned by Faraday's mother and doing what teen couples tend to do in parked vehicles at night after a good date. A unidentified vehicle pulls-up next to the Rambler and the driver exits, presenting a firearm and flashlight and demanding that the couple exit the car. Faraday wa shot in the head before he could even get all the way out of the driver's side down, while Jensen was shot five times in the back while attempting to run from the attacker. Neither teenager survived the encounter.
Almost a year later and a mile from where Jensen & Faraday were found dead, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau are parked in Ferrin's car after their own good date. An unidentified vehicle pulls-up next to the car. Can you guess what happens next? This one was a little more brutal than the 1968 shooting: both victims were shot seven times, twice at close range when the attacker returned to the vehicle after hearing Mageau moaning in pain. Despite that, however, it was not as deadly: Ferrin died at the scene, but Mageau was rescued and made a recovery after being rushed to the hospital.
After this second attack, the man who may as well have existed solely to pull-up alongside kissing couples in a nondescript vehicle and open fire called the police to claim credit for both of the shootings, using a gas station phone booth.
This was the start of the story of what we today know as 'The Zodiac Killings', made by an unknown man who would manifest out of thin air near couples throughout California from 1968 to 1971, either shooting or stabbings his victims, sometimes leave a cryptic message or symbol behind, call the police from a payphone to let them know what he had just done, then vanish to whatever universe whence he came. Nobody to this day knows who he is, and no consistent description was given by survivors of his attacks (aside from identifying him as a male). Someone, probably just an otherwise banal guy doing a day job in California, when out and murdered people as a little hobby, and nobody ever suspected him of it (or did, but didn't want to talk about it). And he was pretty damn good at it.
What stories put the fear in you, D&D? What keeps your lights on at night?
Reading or hearing about what people can and have done, though, given the opportunity to do it? That probably will always keep me awake with the lights on some nights.
It's Halloween, and I've heard plenty of people talk about how all of the 'scary' has been taken out of Halloween. You want scary? Let's talk scary.
Let's head back almost a decade, to 1996, to the most milquetoast of milquetoast communities: Boulder, Colorado. The Ramseys - a millionaire family that enrolls their six year old daughter in state beauty pageants - appears to have a bad HBO drama situation unfold on them: the mother, Patricia Ramsey, can't find said six year old daughter - JonBenet - and discovers a ransom note. The police are called. Nobody can find the daughter even after a search of the home. Detectives arrive. statements are taken. Preparations are made with hostage negotiators.
This facade shatters when skeptical officers lead Mr. Ramsey on a thorough inspection of the home's basement, where JonBenet's bound and gagged body is found in the family wine cellar, hidden in a corner under a blanket. She has been struck on the head with a paintbrush handle hard enough to fracture the skull and strangled with twine. She hasn't been raped.
A lot of the stories I'm going to talk about in this thread are scary mostly because they are not only brutal, but unsolved; this story is scary because it is solved but we pretend that it's not. We know that the Ramseys almost certainly killed their own daughter: the ransom note that Patricia 'discovered' was written by her, according to every expert that has ever examined it (not only is it in her handwriting, it was written by a pen found in the home). The Ramsey's have consustently lied about their activities, their daughter's activities and their son's activities during the morning that the murder took place (the Ramsey's were feeding JonBenet and their son pineapple earlier in the morning; they claim they 'don't remember' doing this; they claim that their son was asleep the entire time, but his fingerprints are all over the kitchen). Based on an objective review of the physical evidence alone, a Grand jury indicted the Ramseys of child abuse & murder of their daughter - but the district attorney, a friend of John Ramsey, refused to sign the indictment and had it sealed, pretending that the verdict was inconclusive. Detectives that have reviewed the evidence alone have almost universally concluded that the Ramseys were guilty of the crime, but most of them doubted their own conclusions after meeting the Ramseys and having John's silver tongue stuck in their ears.
Seven years ago, a man & woman killed their 6 year old child and attempted to lead the police on a wild goose chase about a kidnapping that never occurred. But, because they are wealthy, clean cut and polite, we pretend that it's a mystery. It's more important, when the chips are down, to be courteous to a smiling businessman than to protect children from his wrath. I find that scary.
But that's not random savagery; John Ramsey wouldn't have just killed you in a parking lot and dumped the body in a ditch (or so the thinking goes). He's a monster at large, but at least he's not a phantom.
Let's go to Lake Herman Road in California, on the 20th of December, 1968. Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday are parked in an American Motors Rambler owned by Faraday's mother and doing what teen couples tend to do in parked vehicles at night after a good date. A unidentified vehicle pulls-up next to the Rambler and the driver exits, presenting a firearm and flashlight and demanding that the couple exit the car. Faraday wa shot in the head before he could even get all the way out of the driver's side down, while Jensen was shot five times in the back while attempting to run from the attacker. Neither teenager survived the encounter.
Almost a year later and a mile from where Jensen & Faraday were found dead, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau are parked in Ferrin's car after their own good date. An unidentified vehicle pulls-up next to the car. Can you guess what happens next? This one was a little more brutal than the 1968 shooting: both victims were shot seven times, twice at close range when the attacker returned to the vehicle after hearing Mageau moaning in pain. Despite that, however, it was not as deadly: Ferrin died at the scene, but Mageau was rescued and made a recovery after being rushed to the hospital.
After this second attack, the man who may as well have existed solely to pull-up alongside kissing couples in a nondescript vehicle and open fire called the police to claim credit for both of the shootings, using a gas station phone booth.
This was the start of the story of what we today know as 'The Zodiac Killings', made by an unknown man who would manifest out of thin air near couples throughout California from 1968 to 1971, either shooting or stabbings his victims, sometimes leave a cryptic message or symbol behind, call the police from a payphone to let them know what he had just done, then vanish to whatever universe whence he came. Nobody to this day knows who he is, and no consistent description was given by survivors of his attacks (aside from identifying him as a male). Someone, probably just an otherwise banal guy doing a day job in California, when out and murdered people as a little hobby, and nobody ever suspected him of it (or did, but didn't want to talk about it). And he was pretty damn good at it.
What stories put the fear in you, D&D? What keeps your lights on at night?
With Love and Courage
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