The Haunted Generation

an overwhelming and inexplicable feeling of strange, melancholy disquiet

[questbedhead]

I know I’ve talked about it before but it never ceases to amaze me that the city of Toronto created this labyrinthine series of underground walkways that stretch for kilometres under the heart of downtown and they called it the fucking PATH. like how much more ominous could that even be. It doesn’t even stand for anything it’s just the PATH, all caps. What fucking fae named this artisanal bakery maze.

[questbedhead]

@asimovsideburns​ #it doesn’t even stand for anything????? 

It doesn’t!!! even stand!! for anything!!!

“PATH is downtown Toronto’s enclosed pedestrian walkway linking 29 kilometres of shopping, services and entertainment connecting Toronto Coach Terminal to Maple Leaf Square/Air Canada Centre. The Acronym (PATH) does not stand for anything - just signals that there is a pathway.”

Like I always lose my mind at this. If it doesn’t stand for anything it’s not an acronym Toronto!! Toronto!!!!!!!!!

[longwander]

Copying my tags:

I’m not exaggerating about the part without a ceiling:

This is, by the way, right under Bay & Bloor, dead centre of the city and some of the most expensive real estate in Canada. It radiates an incredible aura of menace.

[questbedhead]

Okay far more poeple have reblogged this than I thought and I just wanted to clarify- the horror of the PATH is not that it all looks like a spooky basement where you’re about to get murdered. There ARE spots like that, but to understand the ~vibe~ of the PATH, you have to understand that it is essentially one very large mall co-designed by like, 70+ different corperations who all have different aesthetics. SO, the PATH looks like that, but it also looks like this

and like this

and like this

and like this

Here’s an entrance to the PATH at Union

And here’s another- also at Union

And here’s another a few blocks away, though tbh I have never been able to enter here because it always seems to be locked, no matter how much I want Wendy’s that day. 

And you’d think these mixed aesthetics would make it easier to navigate, or at least figure out where you are, but again, there are over 70 different entities designing this shit and not one original thought between them. So while you may well know when you step from one property to the next, whatever the look of your current section it’s more than likely they’re a nigh identical section somewhere further just to confound your mortal sense. 

Basically, everyone tagging this with the Magnus Archives is very correct- If any place on earth could be the true domain of the Spiral it’s the PATH, and it’s just a shame Jonny didn’t know about it before the show wrapped up. 

[wizard0rb]

thinking about how an anonymous group (WHO DOESN’T SEEM TO BE AFFILIATED W/ SESAME STREET!!!) found out where jon armond lived and made him swear he wouldn’t show anyone cracks before they gave it to him

[wizard0rb]

oh i am SO glad you asked. gimme a sec

[wizard0rb]

Ok SO. This guy (Jon Armond) claimed to have seen a Sesame Street short as a kid where the cracks in a girl’s wall come to life. One of these cracks is referred to as the “Crack Monster”, which was apparently so unsettling that it “scarred him for life”.

After all was said and done, Jon would end up spending about THIRTY FUCKING YEARS looking for the short. THIRTY. He considered it his life’s work.

Listen. I can appreciate that level of dedication to recovering a lost piece of animation history, but uh. damn.

Anyway, he posted about it online, where many other people reported seeing it as well. The fact that there were multiple accounts of its existence, but little to no information on it anywhere, was what made it start garnering attention on the internet. Now a bunch of people are looking for it.

No one knew for sure what the title was yet, so most referred to it as the “Crack Monster Cartoon”, or something similar. The lack of a known title (or music, or voice actors, or writers, or literally anything) made it extremely difficult to research, but there were too many reports to write it off as a hoax.

So people kept looking.

I’m gonna leave out some details in the middle here, since I don’t wanna make this thread too long. But it’s super interesting, I’d recommend checking it out for yourself. Let’s just skip to the weird part.

After years of searching, Armond received a fax to his workplace with an untraceable number. It read: 

“WE HAVE THE COPY”

Additionally, they said they would send him said copy of the short, on one condition: he was to never show it publicly, or post it online in any way. 

Whoever it was that contacted him, they did NOT want it to be viewed by the general public.

here it is, btw.

So six months pass. Armond gets a letter, which says 

“WE TRUST THIS COMPLETES YOUR SEARCH”

Also enclosed in the envelope is a DVD.

To clarify, he received it on a SUNDAY. These people, whoever they are, found out where he WORKED, and then went to the effort of delivering it PERSONALLY on a day where there was NO MAIL, just to send the message THAT THEY KNEW WHERE HE LIVED AS WELL.

FOR THAT SESAME STREET CARTOON.

So now he has it. And he tells people he has it, but that no one else can see it. Which is, of course, INCREDIBLY unsatisfying to the people online who have also been searching for it, right?

Enter Dycaite, the founder of the Lost Media Wiki.

So Dycaite started looking into it as well. Like I said, I’m skipping a bunch of details in this thread, but long story short he eventually received an anonymous email.

The email contained CRACKS.

There were no instructions telling him not to share it. Dycaite didn’t hesitate, which is how we got the version of CRACKS that I linked.

With the newfound context provided by the video, it actually makes complete sense that it was only aired a few times. This short was made right before the word “Crack” became widely known as a euphemism for drugs, which is how you get characters like “The Crack Monkey”. 

Sesame Street doesn’t want to be associated with that, so they stop airing it right? Eventually it’s forgotten about, the only record of its existence being Sesame Street’s digital archives.

(It’s believed that the person who emailed Dycaite had access to these archives, due to the timestamp and title at the start of their version of the clip.)

So… that’s it right? It SEEMS like it should just be a classic story of formerly lost media, cartoon stops airing, gets lost, people online find it again. We even know WHY it was lost, not because it was “too scary” or whatever, just because it didn’t age well.

But there’s still SO MUCH mystery surrounding CRACKS.

The version of CRACKS that Jon Armond received was different from the version Dycaite received. Armond says his version appears to be an actual recording, as it starts with a brief appearance of Bert and Ernie, before transitioning to the short. As mentioned earlier, Dycaite’s version seems to come from some kind of archive.

So it can be reasonably assumed that the people who contacted Armond are not affiliated with the person who emailed Dycaite. The person who contacted Dycaite also didn’t seem to care if the short was released to the public. Armond still hasn’t released his version of the recording to the public, though has apparently shown it to a few people privately.

So why all the secrecy? And why was Jon Armond given a copy? Did they simply feel bad for him, or was there something they didn’t want him to discover in his search? Was the version Armond received (and therefore the version that was aired) somehow different from the version Dycaite got????

i don’t fucking know babey!!! and neither does anyone else apparently!!!!

oh AND the group who didn’t want CRACKS to ever be viewed doesn’t actually seem to be affiliated with Sesame Street, since they presumably don’t have access to the archives. (otherwise, why not remove the info from the beginning and send that version?)

so there’s an unofficial Sesame Street Forbidden Knowledge Guild out there i fuckin guess!!!!!!!!

anyways that’s cracks for you

(this isn’t comprehensive btw, and i may have gotten some stuff wrong. if you wanna know more here’s a good video on it)

[wizard0rb]

this is the version of this post w/ the right links btw

[thehauntedgeneration]

The early 70s was a moment when people had not quite yet got their head around childhood; childrens media often has a haunted, psychedelic quality, both more whimsical and playful than post-modern cynicism, but also more violent, erotic and disturbing as well. And always, a sort of brownness at the edges of the day, the September-back-to-school of the soul.

If you are a certain age in England, you probably did Movement and Music classes as a small child: the teacher would put on a track, and you would dance and move to perform a tree losing its leaves, or a storm cloud. This, along with the vogue for country dancing, accounted for another trend of the era - pagan seepage into everyday life. This is what this record is for.

Spoken words over radiophonic noises, the poetry of the Seasons is astonishing - vivid and bizzare. October is a woman like a furled up umbrella with a zip-fastener for a mouth; in February "the gaunt elms shudder within the groin of grief; and old men discover their life is a dream they can't remember". Comforting and unsettling all at once, its images something like a spoken tarot deck.

I am reminded of it today because of the frost brings to mind its description of November: the day strung up like a fallow deer and bled, and the light is devoured, the mountains, tortured images of a tranquil star, stand sentinel and keep cruel dreams confined to the white loins of sleep

[randomposts25]

Some cool signs

[babyanimalgifs]

Play time 

(via)

[blumbox243]

Unrestrained summer fun

[world-time-poet]

💔💔💔💔💔

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned about Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman who began taping whatever was on television in 1979 and didn’t stop until her death in 2012.. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV. They are being digitized by the Internet Archive. (x)

[followthebluebell]

i feel like this is selling her a bit short tbh.  It’s not like she was a random woman who decided to tape ‘whatever’ was on television.  She was a civil rights activist and archivist, who was extremely concerned about preserving history.  She believed that, by taping television, she would be preserving history EXACTLY as it was perceived at the time; she didn’t want the detail in the news to disappear with time.  And she was RIGHT.

Like I said, she didn’t just tape ‘whatever’ was on television.  It was extremely targeted towards news stations.  There were 8 VCRs running at all times in her home.  Her life—-and her family’s lives—-were centered around 6 hour blocks, since that was the amount of time that a tape would record for.  Her collections were also extremely organized. 

[thehauntedgeneration]

My favourite Belbury Poly album, evoking the folk horror landscapes of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. The Willows, and especially Caermaen, are wonderful.

Listen to the full playlist here. Occasionally available from Ghost Box records.

I would be extremely greatful to anyone who recognises the Caermaen folk song.

[thehauntedgeneration]

In 1965, Capel Celyn was flooded to provide water for Liverpool

[thehauntedgeneration]

Fuzzy Felt Folk - YouTube