#unexplained stories

[foxfireartist]

In the spirit of Halloween, tell a brief story about an event that happened to you that you have no explanation for then tag someone else to tell their story. I’ll start.

In 2019 I had a year’s supply of contact lenses however, for some reason it seemed that I had less than I thought I did. This was strange because I keep careful track of how many pairs I have left, I’m actually very meticulous about it. My contacts were definitely disappearing. I had 3 pairs (a whole ass box) unaccounted for. It stopped happening when I started keeping my contacts in a lockbox. This also isn’t the first time my stuff has disappeared into thin air, never to be seen again. Just the first time it was something relatively important.

@amestilskin, @yharnamopossum, either of you have any unexplained stories?

[sicsemperserpent]

Jen Silverman: Surreal Beauty

After publishing a Music for Writing playlist artist feature last week, we’re back with more visual/intellectual/revolutionary goodness.

Comic Artist Jen Silverman is a creator/curator of odd stories and images.

Beyond portraits of the surreal, she also has a taste for the type of strange-but-true stories that “leave you with more questions than answers,” to quote the artist. Jen has created comic shorts detailing historical Easter Eggs such as The Dyatlov Pass Incident and the mysterious Polybius machine (which potentially played a role in the CIA’s infamous MKULTRA). Eat your heart out Robert Ripley!

[excerpt from Jen Silverman’s The Dyatlov Pass Incident]

“I'm the type of person who needs to make physical things, art just happens to be my outlet for that. I like working on something, putting all my time and energy into a thing and then seeing it at the end, that it exists, and throwing it out into the world to see what happens to it.” Jen says of her favorite subjects, “I love the surreal. Stuff that's weird and creepy and wrong and can't be tied up in a neat little bow at the end of the story.”

And to seal the deal on Jen’s feel for the surreal, she sculpts severed body parts to suspend in fluid-filled mason jars. Fo’ real.

Jen Silverman will be debuting new unexplained mystery and conspiracy theory content at MSP ComiCon on May 14th & 15th, but until then, she shared with us these wise words for artists of all kinds, “If you have an idea for a thing you want to make, make it. Make it badly. Throw the whole thing away and start over and make it better this time. Or fail again and keep going from there. Just don't choose not to do it. Be brave enough to suck at something because it's the only way to learn to stop sucking.”

By T. Martin Crouse - Editor-in-Chief at Sic Semper Serpent

[qweenie]

My unexplained stories

Everyone in my family believes that my cousin's house is haunted. There have been several incidents where some unexplained things have happened. Example 1, my cousin was awake at 430 in the basement (where it's most 'haunted') and he was watching tv. All of a sudden, a kleenex box fully flies off the shelf to the other side of the room... Example 2, my aunt and my uncle were sleeping in the basement, and my uncle woke up because someone/thing lifted up his leg, and then my aunt saw their swinging patio furniture, which was inside because it was winter, swinging in the hallway. No one else was downstairs. I was always hesitant to believe these stories but then I had some weird things happen to me, not as creepy though.

First one happened last Fall. I met up with my cousins in Newmarket. After we went to the mall and ate with the family, we watched Nightmare on Elm Street and fell asleep. We fell asleep in the basement, I have no idea why because it's seriously the creepiest part of her house. In the middle of the night at around 4am I hear this really loud sound, like someone dropped a huge iron cast skillet on the kitchen floor (there's a kitchen in the basement). I wake up and sit up from the couch, I don't know why I did this, because I'm seriously a scaredy cat. I look into the kitchen but it's just pitch black. I keep staring in hopes that my eyes would adjust but I still couldn't see anything. I thought maybe one of the parents came down for something and hit a pan or something else, but I didn't hear anyone moving. Scared to death, I darted my head back down onto the pillow and hid under the blanket. Eventually I fell asleep. The next morning we all wake up, and before I could even say anything, my one cousin asks "DID YOU GUYS HEAR THAT LOUD SOUND LAST NIGHT IN THE KITCHEN?! I was too scared to look up, but I saw you *points to me* did, did you see anything?!" So, that was definitely not in my imagination, and we still don't know what the hell that was. 

Next story is a lot shorter and less eerie. Same house, same basement, a few summers back. I was playing RockBand by myself, in the basement, because everyone else was too preoccupied with something upstairs. I was all in the groove and stuff, then I feel someone breathing on me and watching me, you know that feeling right? Well I turned around and obviously no one was there. I continue playing just thinking that it was my mind playing tricks on me and I felt it again, on my other shoulder. I was seriously creeped out and just stopped playing and ran upstairs. I know this one could be more of paranoia, but it drove me out of the basement.