On April 13, 1990, the investigators got a phone call. Jackie was hysterical. Barry Conrad and Jeff Wheatcraft immediately jumped in their car and drove to Weldon. They arrived around midnight, but of course the house was quiet. Conrad turned on his camera and conducted some interviews. Nothing happened. So Jackie had an idea: “Let’s use a Ouija board and see if we can get it to talk to us.” The investigators weren’t too keen on the idea. It wasn’t that they believed the stories that a Ouija board could somehow “open the door” for evil spirits; they thought it was just a toy. Still, they agreed to give it a try.
THE CONVERSATION
Conrad trained his camera on the Ouija board while Jackie and a neighbor looked on. Wheatcraft and Conrad sat at the table with the board placed between them. Then the camera shut off. Conrad got up and turned it back on. And it shut off again. Just like that first night in the attic, he couldn’t get it to work. So although there were four witnesses, there was no camera to record what happened next. Here’s what they reported.
Shortly into the séance, the room grew very cold. As the two men asked questions, the pointer moved from letter to letter, sometimes with their hands upon it, other times by itself. It spelled out its answers while Jackie wrote everything down.
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Ivy League economists say gentle, text-based nagging can persuade people to save more of their money.
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Q: Are you really a ghost?
A: YES
Q: How many ghosts reside among the living?
A: PHANTOMS FILL THE SKIES ABOVE YOU
While Wheatcraft and Conrad tried to make sense of the response, the table began to shake. Then a candle went out. Then another one went out. They resumed the session.
Q: Where did you die?
A: SAN PEDRO BAY
Q: Did you drown?
A: NO, I WAS HELD UNDER WATER
Q: Did you live in the San Pedro house?
A: MY MURDERER
Q: Why do you follow Jackie?
A: ENERGY
As the night went on and dawn approached, the spirit revealed even more: He died in 1930, and he hanged Jeff Wheatcraft because “YOU HAVE THE LIKENESS OF MY KILLER.” Then Conrad asked, “Is there anyone in this room that you hate?” The letters spelled out: “J-E-F-F”.
And then, wrote Conrad: “For in a furious few seconds, Jeff and chair were levitated off the floor and hurled backwards into the trailer wall. The impact was so great that the entire trailer shook as Jeff toppled to the floor, unconscious.” Petrified, Jackie quickly took her two kids out of the house. Conrad was able to rouse Wheatcraft and get him to safety as well. Knowing that she couldn’t escape the spirit and that there was nothing left for her in Weldon, Jackie and her two children went back to San Pedro to stay at a friend’s house.
NAMES TO THE FACES
“The majority of paranormal cases aren’t worth pursuing,” explains Barry Taff. “There’s a lot of invention, a lot of embellishment, and a lot of outright fraud.” But Jackie Hernandez’s ordeal was different. “This is is the first case, out of more than 3,000 that I’ve been on, where the phenomenon went after the researchers.” It even followed Wheatcraft and Conrad back to their L.A. apartment, taunting them by—among other things—turning on the stove burners and placing scissors under their pillows. Wheatcraft said he was even pushed again.
* * *
The Manor, Tori Spelling’s childhood home, has 123 rooms, including one just for gift-wrapping and an entire floor of closets. Interested? It’s on the market for $150 million.
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DOCK OF THE BAY
So who was this malevolent spirit? After the séance, Conrad looked through old newspapers and found an article dated March 25, 1930, about a young sailor named Herman Hendrickson who was found dead in the water at the San Pedro docks. He had a large gash on his head, and foul play was suspected, but there were no witnesses. So police ultimately ruled the death accidental, believing that he probably slipped, hit his head, and drowned. When Jackie read the article, she felt right away, “That’s him.”
And what about the other ghost—the old man? Jackie believes she found out during the summer of 1990, after she moved back to San Pedro. While staying at her friend’s house, she saw a bright light outside one afternoon. Jackie followed it to a graveyard a few blocks away from her old house. It seemed to hover above the grave of a man named John Damon. “It went around and around the grave and just disappeared,” she recalled. Jackie later learned that her old house had been built by that same John Damon.
MOVING ON
Barry Conrad produced a documentary movie about the case called An Unknown Encounter: A Haunting in San Pedro. He also wrote a book about it. Barry Taff, still in the paranormal business, says he’s never seen a case like this one, before or since. He doesn’t know why or how this entity was so focused and so powerful, but he believes that it was somehow “feeding off the negative energy emanating from Jackie” in those troubled times. “One theory is that the environment can somehow store information,” he said. “And under the proper circumstances the information is reconstructed so that you can feel it, see it, or hear it.
Jackie Hernandez settled in an apartment in San Pedro. (She had it blessed by a priest before she moved in.) Then she started repairing her life. As things got back to normal—and she stopped bringing the investigators around—the “activity” grew quieter and quieter over the next couple of years. Today, she still lives in San Pedro, and claims that although she hasn’t been attacked since the early 1990s, the ghost of Herman Hendrickson still makes its presence known to her every once in a while. And at last report, Jackie’s old house is still haunted. The present owners have said that no previous tenant lasted more than six months.
CONCLUSION
To date, no one has ever been able to produce video proof of a haunting. Yet with the Jackie Hernandez case, everyone involved took and passed lie detector tests. In addition, the investigators captured footage of what appear to be floating balls of light, including one that can be clearly seen flying into Jackie’s head. Video experts and insect experts have examined the footage—as well as the still photographs—and all said the same thing: “These are not bugs or reflections or anything else that can be easily explained away. They’re like nothing we’ve ever seen.” That’s not all. Conrad filmed objects that moved on their own, as well as “something” dripping out of the wall. When Taff took the liquid to the forensics lab at UCLA to be tested, it was determined to be human plasma.
So why isn’t the San Pedro case the “smoking gun”—the one that makes everyone believe in spirits? “The problem is,” admits Taff, “these days, anything can be faked. So it’s not truth beyond a reasonable doubt.”
And the search for the proof of ghosts continues.
PERSISTENCE SQUARED
A 22-year-old British man, Graham Parker, bought a Rubik’s Cube in 1983 at the peak of the puzzle toy fad’s popularity. He started trying to solve it, and kept trying…for 26 years. Finally, in 2009, at age 48, Parker solved it. “I’ve missed many important events,” he said, “and I’ve had wrist and back problems from spending hours on it, but when I clicked that last bit into place, I wept.”
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The yolk of an ostrich egg is the largest single cell in the world.
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O CANADA…
…glorious and weird! O Canada, we stand on weird for thee…
Police in Langley, British Columbia, issued a warning to men in the city in October 2009: be on the lookout for a “serial testicle kicker.” Police said a woman in her late teens or early twenties had walked up to several men in the city and, without warning, kicked them in the groin. One man, 22-year-old Anthony Clark, had even lost a testicle to the woman. “I just want to know what her problem is,” Clark said.
A man whose car ran into a ditch while being chased by police in southwest Ontario in February 2010 ran across a shallow river to hide his tracks—and th
en jumped into the snow and covered himself up to hide. Officers couldn’t find him until they brought in a canine unit. The man was arrested…and taken to a hospital to be treated for hypothermia…hours later.
Robert Medwid, 39, and Sabrina Lonsberry, 32, of Red Deer, Alberta, won the Canadian national lottery in January 2007, taking the $13.8 million jackpot. Medwid chosen the winning numbers based on the weather in Scarborough, Ontario, where the numbers are drawn. “I decided to research the climate, humidity, and snowfall on draw nights in Scarborough,” Medwid said, “and I chose my numbers based on that information.” Winning numbers: 5, 9, 14, 31, 37, and 46. (Brrr!)
Bela Kosoian, 38, of Montreal, Quebec, was arrested in 2009. Her crime: not holding a handrail on an escalator in a subway station. (She was busy digging in her bag for change when ordered to hold the rail, and refused.) She was handcuffed, taken to a holding cell, and finally released with a $100 ticket for the handrail offense and a $320 fine for obstructing justice. Said Kosoian, who left the Soviet Union years ago to live in Canada, “Stalin may be dead, but Stalinism lives on.”
In August 2009, three men from Cudworth, Saskatchewan, took a video of themselves illegally shooting ducks on a pond—from their car—and put the video on YouTube. They were arrested within days, fined $5,000 each, and banned from hunting for three years. One of the men, David Fraser, 30, tried to explain the incident by saying they’d only recently moved to Saskatchewan from Toronto…where the only birds they’d ever seen were seagulls and pigeons.
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Q: Why did the moose cross the road? A: To get to his hoose.
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David Dauphinee, 52, and his brother Daniel Dauphinee, 51, both retired officers with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, were arrested in 2001 after throwing dozens of onions, apples, and oranges at police officers from a 19th-floor hotel room window in Winnipeg. When police got to the room, the two men—who were drunk—jumped into bed together and pretended to be asleep. When asked for their names, police said the older brother “barked, like a large dog.” The two were convicted of assault with a weapon (the fruit and vegetables) and sentenced to two months in prison.
In 2008 Catherine McCoubrey, 25, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, stabbed her boyfriend in the heart…accidentally…while attempting to carve a heart shape into his skin with a large knife, which he had asked her to do while they were having “rough sex.” She pleaded guilty to assault and was given three years of probation. The boyfriend nearly died, doctors said, but made a full recovery.
A Toronoto gym owner named Rick Evans applied for the vanity license plate “KICK-BUTT” in 2009. However, the review board rejected because it “condoned violence and contained sexual subject matter.” Ironically, Evans’s first license plate choice was “BUTT-KICK”…which wasn’t available because someone else had successfully applied for, and received, the plate.
Juanita Stead, 36, of eastern Newfoundland, went to a hospital on New Year’s Eve 2008 with abdominal pain. She and her husband Terry both thought she was passing a kidney stone. Doctors took X-rays, but could see no evidence of a kidney stone…they could, however, see a baby in her belly. “I told him he had the wrong X-ray file,” Stead said. Six minutes later, she gave birth to a 7-pound, 12-ounce boy. Stead, who’d had another child two years earlier, had no idea she was pregnant—she hadn’t experienced any morning sickness, and her menstrual cycle continued normally. “Honest to God,” her husband said, “I just don’t have words to explain it.” (Little Nicholas is doing just fine.)
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Japanese embassies have a 24-hour hotline for Japanese tourists suffering from severe culture shock.
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JACKASSES
MTV’s show Jackass (2000 to ’02) featured a group of young men performing dangerous and disgusting stunts. Of course it was a huge hit. But for some die-hard fans, just watching it on TV wasn’t enough—they had to live it!
SPITFIRE
Jackass was created in 1999 by a 27-year-old writer and out-of-work actor named Johnny Knoxville, who came up with a novel idea for a magazine article: To test the effectiveness of different defensive weapons, he would purposely get himself shot, tasered, and pepper-sprayed. A skateboarding magazine liked the idea, but suggested it would be funnier if Knoxville filmed all of the tests. He did, and they ended up in a skateboarding video called Big Brother Number Two, which became hugely popular. Knoxville and his friends (including director Spike Jonze) shopped the idea of an amateur stunt show to several networks. MTV outbid Comedy Central for the rights, and Jackass premiered in 2000.
I CAN DO THAT
Fans immediately took to the show’s no-holds-barred stunts. In one infamous episode, Knoxville donned a flame-retardant suit, attached raw steaks to his body, had himself tied to a giant rotisserie spit, and was set on fire. But at least two of the 4.9 million viewers who saw the stunt didn’t heed the warning to “not try this at home.” In January 2001, Jason Lind, 13, of Torrington, Connecticut, went into his backyard, doused his hands and pants in gasoline, and a friend lit his pants on fire. Unfortunately, Jason left out the most important part—the flame-retardant suit. After jumping into the snow trying to smother the flames, he ended up with second-degree burns to much of his body. His friend was arrested for reckless endangerment.
A few weeks later, 12-year-old Thomas Hitz sprayed bug repellent on his hands in a friend’s backyard in Lake Mary, Florida. He was then lit on fire and ended up jumping into a swimming pool while his friends laughed. Thomas also was severely burned.
EXCUSES, EXCUSES
The two incidents made headlines, especially after the boys’ families claimed it was MTV’s fault. “I don’t blame myself,” said Thomas Hitz. “I did it because I saw it on Jackass and I was copying the show.” (His mother described him as “very intelligent.”) The Hitzes appeared on Good Morning, America and insisted that MTV should cancel Jackass. Senator Joe Lieberman agreed. In an open letter to MTV, he wrote, “Either cancel this exploitative and degrading show or eliminate the stunts that could be dangerous if imitated by children.”
* * *
Mattel’s game Mindflex uses your brain’s EEG activity to move a ball around an obstacle course.
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At first, MTV bosses held their ground: “While we don’t accept responsibility, obviously we feel horrible when a young person does something to hurt themselves,” they wrote in a statement. “We take great care to air our shows responsibly. Jackass airs with a TV-Mature rating, with written and verbal warnings throughout the show.” They also pointed out that the episode had featured three minutes of footage showing Knoxville’s safety precautions.
In the end, however, MTV moved Jackass to a late-night slot and limited the stunts the cast could do—which upset fans as well as the performers, some of whom quit. The show ended its run less than a year later, and Knoxville and his cohorts went on to make a string of successful Jackass movies. “It’s a real primal thing, watching someone get hurt,” said Knoxville. “It’s funny and accessible. I should quit, but man, we have so much fun!”
MORE JACKASS-INSPIRED IDIOCY
Both of the burned boys made full recoveries. But they weren’t the only ones who tried the “home version” of the show.
• A 16-year-old Wisconsin teen copied a stunt in which a Jackass crewmember ran up and stole a taco from the hand of a worker at a drive-through. However, unlike on the show, this particular fast-food worker held onto the taco and ended up with a broken arm.
• Four Scottish men in their 20s were arrested in 2004 after performing a fake kidnapping in which one of the men stumbled out of a car in a supermarket parking lot with a black plastic bag over his head, screaming for help. The men told police they were recreating a scene from Jackass because it was “funny.”
• In 2006 a 22-year-old British man copied a stunt from the first Jackass movie. While his friends watched, he got down on all fours and launched a firework known as a “Black Cat Thunderbolt”…ou
t of his rectum. (Rectum? It damn near killed him!)
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“What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?” —Ursula K. Le Guin
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HOAXERS
Why are people so quick to believe any old story they’re told? Simple: Because this world is a crazy place, and crazy things happen all the time. Here are two classic hoaxes, and one recent one.
THE ICEBERG COMETH
April 1, 1978, was a gloomy, overcast day in Sidney, Australia. But that didn’t stop hundreds of people from going to the harbor to await the arrival of local entrepreneur Dick Smith, owner of Dick Smith Foods. He’d promised to show up in a barge hauling an iceberg. Then, he said, he was going to break up the massive iceberg and sell the pieces as “dickcicles”—ice cubes made from pure Antarctica water. A lot of the onlookers figured it was just a big April Fool’s Day joke and Smith wouldn’t show up at all. But then, off in the distance, they could see the barge…and it really was hauling an iceberg. A few minutes later the Dickenberg I, as a local DJ dubbed it, floated into Sydney Harbor.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy Page 48