False Walls

November 2nd. 1975.   Ostia.   Around 6:30 AM, the sun is coming up in the open fields of an ancient fishing village.   Just a few miles outside of Rome, it feels a world away from the Eternal City, The Capital of The World.      The rising sun reveals pebbled beaches, salt marshes, faded signs, piles of concrete.   The waters of the Tyrenniean Sea gently meet the sand at the nearby Lidos, but we...

This is False Walls….    Collect your belongings and pass the control gates.   Separate from the teeming crowd of tourists on holiday and locals folding back into reality.     Take the road from the airport but veer off immediately.   This is not the road that leads to Rome.  

Location:  Stockholm Sweden This year, I found myself in various locations in the Nordic countries, a region that contains stunning natural phenomena as well as a deep folklore populated by an endless cast of mystical beings.  Trolls inhabit lakes and dark caves, elves are found in deep forests and waterfalls, giants inhabit mountain ranges and rocky islands.  And yet even in the modern cities, fo...

Location:  Kuwait City, Kuwait Welcome to part two of our search for hidden statues, figurative memorial symbols of power or commemoration that have fallen from favor, pulled from their pedestals and have been defaced, destroyed, decapitated and/or hidden away in secret locations as shameful totems of the past.      In our last episode, I brought to you my adventures in statue hunting in Albania,...

Of all the ways to achieve immortality, becoming a statue is probably not the one you want. If there exists a moment in time in which the powers that be go through the machinations to create and erect these figurative memorial statues, the powers that be may eventually fall from favor, the moment in time the statue represents may eventually be seen as a less than ideal moment of history, and these...

This story involves murder, mystery, cryptic clues, hidden identities, and ulterior motives, all wrapped around one the best known tales in what we now call the True Crime genre.  But we'll look beyond the usual voyeuristic parlor games and shine a little light on the real people, and the real circumstances, that lead to the horrific real life killing of several women in Victorian London, as well...

Over 1500 prisoners made their way to Alcatraz federal Penitentiary during the 33 years it was operational.  These prisoners, especially in the early days, were considered the worst of the worst, though this ranking was determined less by the heinousness of the crimes committed before incarceration than the prisoner's behavior behind bars.  Those individuals who caused the most trouble at their re...

The isolation is eerie and palpable, and insult is even more injurious as the glittering lights of downtown San Francisco and all of it's wanton freedoms are within plain sight, only 1.25 miles away.  It was not uncommon for prisoners to hear Christmas music and and the sound of new years eve parties traveling across the bay.  And yet, Alcatraz as well be on the moon, because the likelihood of esc...

It is Friday the 13th, 1973...   Misty morning… clouds in the sky.   Without warning… a wizard walks by.   Well, perhaps not a wizard, but rather a magician, and occultist, paranormal investigator, a vampire hunter...

"The Ten Courts Of Hell are contained in a large, snake shaped mountain of crumbling plaster, which at one point was in the form of a large dragon. Small severed heads adorn the outside, with an inscription in Chinese that I would later learn translates to "The sea of bitterness has no boundaries, turn back and you will find shore". I suppose this was meant as a warning, a portent of what lay wait...

"Graceland Too is a garish, decaying colonial home in Holly Springs, Mississippi, the world's most insane fire hazard of an Elvis museum, a decrepit doppelganger, alternate universe facsimile of the real thing.  Every single inch of the home is covered in multiple layers of Presley memorabilia, an impenetrable strata of priceless junk, a hoarder's heaven.   It's a handmade shrine to the King, the...

"Traveling around the Middle East, sometimes I was able to find a guy with a car who I could convince to be as excited about as I am about discovering hidden local gems, people that were up for a little adventure. Mr Islam, though polite, was not one of them. It took a little extra persuasion, and a couple extra bucks, but eventually we headed out of Doha proper in search of camelbots…"