For some reason it always comes down to December and I have nothing to say. Not a lot of blogs hit this site at the end the year, but with Project Blue Book returning to History Channel in January, my reviews of each episode will too. Nerd out with your flying saucer out. 🛸 I even take notes for those. Not because I'm intelligent and engaged, but because my short term memory is crap. Full of memes, probably. The 2010's have been a trip.
I've had a decade of devotion to the strange and uncanny; the mysterious and eerie. From summer 2011 to now, minus the entirety of 2016, I've been hittin' the ghost shit, hard. The first 4 years were a lesson in bad characters, shady secrets, a pile of manipulation and straight up fakery. It taught me a lot, and taught me what it means to separate myself from deeply disturbed people. I still have to work at that, as there are always those types that either pop up afresh, or show their true colors over time. People leak. They're leaky and wordy, and that stuff spreads around. The second time around in the paranormal, I've lead the charge. I started a thing, or a Thing. The capital T indicates a beginning, a sword shoved into the ground at the starting point.
Since January 2017 it's been a winding road, rocky and unpaved. A little backtracking, but continuous marching on. I've held pity parties and led spirit communication sessions. I've felt scared, and I've felt disappointed. I've grown to a duo and crossed off 10 more states in pursuit of strange stuff, all while carrying a camera, (and trying not to face it at my feet on accident). I have absolutely no more answers than I did when I started, but I never expected to get those. Not in the world of the paranormal. Answers aren't viable here. What we call "answers" in the paranormal is just the brain making points of logic from A to B that feel safe and comfortable for the moment. I've learned to accept those at face value, but stay ready to pull them apart when something else very strange interrupts that comfortable, logical thought.
See that's the point: pulling apart your brain. De-wrinkling the gray matter to fold it on itself again as many times as will hold, before yet again, something strange happens. It's not that I love frustrating myself, it's that I love the experiences that can cause that frustration. Okay, and a little of that frustration as well. The things we hear or see or feel or (sense?) in the dark (and the daylight) in strange places, in familiar places, that fuck with us; I love those. I suppose the things we hear that sound like voices are fairly straightforward. But pulling the wrinkle that says "that's a human voice" open and whispering in "what if it's not" is what I love. Refolding my brain like an impossible fitted sheet around my own logic when it comes to things I can't explain is what I like to do. We all get to do that when faced with the strange. I like to go after those experiences, marinate in them, and carry them in my brain wrinkles forever.
The other side are the videos we make from all the stuff we do. We spend a lot of weekends, and long weekends sneaking in a paid day off here and there when we can, away from home. Sometimes there's an AirBnB in exactly the right place (like Philly), and sometimes there's a strangely named motel in the middle of wherever on the map is closest the odd stuff (hello there Iowa, West Virginia and Kentucky). It all works, and it all becomes part of the story we end up with, even if those places tend not to make it into final videos unless they're haunted AF. All these nights away from the careful arrangement of bed pillows both Ryan and I have crafted for our respective needs are spent forgoing sleep to speak to the air (or what's in it), hoping for a response. (A knock, bang, door closing, thing moving. A yell, whistle, breath.) A response with possible interpretive meaning is just a rare bonus. (A spoken, understood word. A sentence. Physical interaction.)
We know we spend these nights with mental fingers crossed and hands physically full of electronics. There's no guarantee. You and I both know that. Even the statistics of experiencing things that can't be explained, if someone were to figure that out, are probably so low it's ABSURD to look. BUT WE DO. We've gone to Iceland for this shit, folks. Ice fucking land. I love what we get to do. I love googling haunted hotels and booking a weekend there. I love being inside a location with an overwhelmingly spooky atmosphere and a sordid history full of humanity's worst behavior, just to feel the space. I like exploring decaying, offensively trashed buildings just to watch them rot for a few hours. It's like being in a dystopian future movie but Michael Bay isn't blowing shit up, it's just humans, making and ruining their own creations.
Like I said, this past decade has been a TRIIIIP (air horn noises). I have to put some sort of value on everything I went through, in order to respect myself now for what I do, and for what we're trying to do as Full Dark. In its most distilled form, our goal is basically trying to experience weird activity and mysterious, sometimes pretty freaky, situations, and present them in some artistic way; in 1080p and mastered sound levels, to convey our weirdness to the world. I'm glad I got my head out of my ass and started this Thing in 2017. It's only getting bigger, (terrifying, gratifying), and better (omfg more Iowa).
Keep it Strange in the New Year,›
