If you’re looking for hard-hitting analysis of local political issues, then you’re out of luck. If you want ghosts, UFOs, disappearing woodland arches and mysterious black forest beasts, then Cumberland Times-News (Md.) columnist Jim Goldsworthy is your man:
So many things that have no apparent explanation have happened to me, while I was wide awake and cold sober, that I now tend to shrug them off or shake my head and wonder, What next?
You write a 1,000 word column about every single one of them.
Years ago, I was slapped in broad daylight by something I couldn’t see on the third floor of a house I eventually decided was haunted. That’s not all it did, but those are stories for another time.
The ghosts must read his column.
As I watched little green lights flittering around in the middle of the night at the Gettysburg battlefield, I simply wondered, “Is it real, or is it Memorex?” Similar lights have chased and scared the bejabbers out of my friends…
“Is it Live, or is It Memorex?” was coined in 1971. Bejabbers was last used in a speakeasy in Kansas City in 1927. And for the record, three paragraphs into the column we’ve learned that he’s seen ghosts and UFOs.
Such things make life more interesting, and I feel sorry for people who think they have it all figured out. If you tell me something is unlikely in the extreme, I can accept that and might even agree. However, a person who flatly says something is impossible, particularly when it’s not his specific field of knowledge, is someone whose money I could take, if I wanted to.
So, if you disagree with Mr. Goldsworthy, he will mug you, if he wanted to. Speaking of experts, here’s a segue, for your reading pleasure:
Dr. Peter Venkman: Alice, I’m going to ask you a couple of standard questions, okay? Have you or any of your family been diagnosed schizophrenic? Mentally incompetant?
Librarian Alice: My uncle thought he was Saint Jerome.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I’d call that a big yes. Uh, are you habitually using drugs? Stimulants? Alcohol?
Librarian Alice: No.
Dr. Peter Venkman: No, no. Just asking. Are you, Alice, menstruating right now?
Library Administrator: What’s has that got to do with it?
Dr. Peter Venkman: Back off, man. I’m a scientist.
I’ll skip past the vanishing arch in the woods and the disappearing Indian grave.
The sudden absence of things…
Like reason.
…or a unexplained presence that seems out of place — or even out of time — can be unsettling.
Like this column.
Although most wildlife experts say mountain lions are extinct in the eastern United States, folks often report seeing cougar-sized cats, particularly black ones, in places where they shouldn’t be. A fellow from Frostburg was interviewed on a History Channel show about the subject.
One of those big black cats that don’t exist ran across the road in front of my car recently. This was in broad daylight, and at first I thought it was a deer. I’ve seen plenty of deer on this stretch of road.
Running tally: Ghostbusters, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stargate, Poltergeist, History Channel special on a dude from Frostburg. I sense a pattern to his sighthings. A prediction: during next week’s column he relates his adventures with ManBearPig and the Cardiff Giant.
My advice to our paranormal investigator: take a deep breath, run a warm bath and cancel the cable.
