Fringe Lifestyles

(I'm taking a hike tour of South Mountain (the mountain range the Phoenix Lights occurred at and where I live) We're going to be shown ancient Indian petroglyphs that supposedly portray how UFOs visited here long ago. As well, I'm dragging my buddy, Vinnie, to get his aura photo taken and mine too. I should have plenty of interesting video/photos/stories to share).

What do you know about your neighbors? Perhaps not as much as you think. There are so many alternate lifestyles that people enjoy on the side that it makes one wonder, what is normal nowadays?

Swingers: Everyone knows of swingers lifestyle. You're sick of looking at the same face (or other body part) during sex and you want something new. You want that zip you first feel when you're with someone new and you don't know what their touch and technique will be like. It's not terribly shocking nowadays and, in fact, can happen at a really wild party or when couples rent a cabin and enjoy a jacuzzi after a few mojitos. It's about as experimental as two teen girls on a dance floor exchanging saliva and testing the waters.

Perhaps we should turn up the lifestyle edginess button a bit. How about...

LARPers: Live-action role-playing done in parks and fields around the country in full garb and makeup, acting out like dungeons and dragons lots of scenarios in a sort of mock medieval geek fest. There are different levels of LARPers from those who put it on for the weekend fun and others who live it daily and then go online and play World of Warcraft. Their close kin are the “Cosplay” folks (costume play) and some of whom decide to costume themselves based on things like super heroes, cartoons, anime and manga. (I'm sorry, I just giggled).

Okay, so weekend costumers in the park don't shock you? Let's go a bit further...

Vampires: Yes, there are people who want so much to be vampires that they not only live the nocturnal lifestyle and the desire for blood, but even sleep in coffins and shun the sun at all costs. It reminds me of when I was a kid and I thought that if I did my bedroom up like the inside of Jeannie's bottle on “I Dream of Jeannie” and wore the costume and blinked with my arms crossed, I'd somehow become her. We usually outgrow this some time (between fifth and sixth grade, I believe).

Okay, so blood sucking nocturnal dwellers are not giving you shivers. Perhaps we need to take you to a more hardcore alternative lifestyle.

Fetish/BDSM: Bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism and masochism. This is pretty obvious to most of us. Yes, those happy people who want some role playing on a more hardcore level including lots of pain combined with pleasure and playing out scenarios. Imagine playing “doctors” but on a seedy adult side instead of curious children. It goes further than this, however. This also includes those who enjoy human suspension. You're not quite sure what that is? Sounds horrible? The ones who don't get enough out of leather straps and whips, enjoy sticking hooks into their skin and hanging from it as some kind of ultimate test.

What do we get out of all of this, besides that our neighbors may be into poking anything that moves and perhaps even in a costume with a name like “Lord Gyro” and a whip in hand?

Perhaps pornography easily available online (instead of blushingly bought by only the brave at 7-11's), role-playing online games, television and movies showing people with glamorous and interesting lives has given us poor folks a feeling of mediocre lives and boring existences in which we work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep. Instead of being Harry in Cleveland working as an insurance agent by day, that man can design a character on WoW who is strong, brave and ballsy. Perhaps he can flirt with a secretary in Memphis and begin a little sexting dialogue. He could even escape in his mind to being a medieval blacksmith in a weekend game in the park.

Honestly, I was always bucking the trends when I was younger, so am I not running around enjoying such crazy lifestyles? Perhaps because of this one last horrifying alternative lifestyle that has me wondering about the whole genre...

Furries: Anthropomorphic characters that are part animal/part human. They wear costumes and makeup, ears, tails, and sometimes want to take it to more permanent levels. These people don't just dress up like animal creatures and are attracted to other animal creatures, the ones who take it to a hardcore level are into body modifications to actually become a creature as much as possible.

Okay, now I did something I strive to do on my blog—terrify you from time to time and leave you unsettled.

Comments

Don Monroe Case Files: Unusual Carving Unearthed!

Life-long explorer, adventurer and researcher, Don Monroe, has a million stories to tell, only he's been on the road nonstop, busy hiking the back country in dozens of countries, climbing the highest peaks and crawling in the deepest caves to understand this natural world we live in. He has hunted, tracked, trapped, cast footprints, talked to Native people, continued several-decade long ongoing research projects, devoured tons of research books, and ultimately sought answers about every aspect of nature and all the mysteries within. During those travels, he came across many unusual things. What I am presenting now is one of them - Don Monroe and a researcher friend named Massey, were up at about 7000 feet on Anaconda Range in Montana. They were tracking a bear when Don noted something sticking out of the ground, just a bit of something, but didn't look like a regular rock. In this remote area at that elevation, the idea of running across something man-made was unlikely. He s...

Terror of Doll Island!

Photo source Isla de las Munecas or "Island of the Dolls" (popularly coined "Doll Island") is a thing of horror for many. Why would an island filled with dolls for decades, laid to waste by the elements and neglect, be terrifying? Well, let me introduce you to its most unsettling beginnings. Don Julian Santana was unhappy with city life and moved to an island on a canalway south of Mexico City for peace and quiet. It was there that the legend begins and takes on a life that is animated enough to bring the dead to life. Don reported that a little girl had drowned in the canal 50 years ago and he believed her spirit to be troubled and haunting his little island. He said that he was out one day when he saw a doll floating in the canal and scooped it out, hanging it up on a tree near the drowning spot to make the girl eternally happy so she would not haunt and scare him. He then became consumed with finding more and more dolls, fishing them out of the canal, sorting t...

Monsters in the Deepest Ocean!

The ocean takes up the majority of the surface on our world and yet so little of what is in it is known to us. Upon occasion, we come across some real mysteries, tantalizing glimpses that make us wonder. For a long time, the giant squid (above) was a legend until it was finally filmed underwater. What other legends might tell us what is in the sea? One creative thinker in 1570 drew up the sea monsters that lay in the waters outside of Iceland. Scientist and artist, Abraham Ortelius had some very fanciful ideas of what awaited the seafarer. He also pondered what might live in the Pacific Ocean. In 1644, another artist/scientist drew up what he thought might lurk in the waters off of Africa. Willem Blaeu had quite an interesting vision. In 1727, Peter Kolb envisioned a sea lion of interesting characteristics - In present day, we still run across things in the sea that puzzle us. Here is one such thing photographed at Hook Island. It was estimated to be 75-80 feet long and to this day the...

Scary and Precarious Roads!

Summer road trip time - why not consider scaring the crap out of your family? The road to Big Sur (above) is sure to separate boys from men. Highway 1 is an intense cliff hugging drive along the coast for 122 miles from Monterey to Morro Bay. Independence Pass from Aspen to Leadville in Colorado. Highway 82 is a 187-mile white knuckler. And if that's not enough, you take the over 1000-foot tall highest suspension bridge in the world! Great Smoky Mountains National Park "Tail of the Dragon" in North Carolina/Tennessee Highway 129 takes you on 11 miles of awesome views. Clinton Road , Passaic County, New Jersey. Seriously paranormal , " If you are visiting the road at midnight, stop by the bridge at Dead Man’s Curve for a game of catch. Toss pennies into the water, and the ghost of a young boy will toss them back. A gray wolf with red eyes will stalk you from the bushes. Satan worshippers will hang hang up their bloody clot...

Obscure Horror Movies of the 70s and 80s

The 1970s and 1980s were horror movie lovers' heaven! There were movies about nature turning on man because of pollution, witches, devil worshippers, killers, insanity, revenge, demons, families moving into haunted houses, beasts attacking, and teens being slashed. You might have missed some of the more obscure ones in the offering - *Descriptions thanks to my favorite movie site IMDB (The Food of the Gods - 1976) The Food of the Gods: A group of friends travel to a remote Canadian island to hunt, only to be attacked by giant killer animals which have populated the place. The People: Kim Darby and William Shatner star in this 1972 made-for-tv movie. A woman is sent to a secluded valley to teach school to the reclusive residents' children. The citizens start showing some odd skills and pretty soon the teacher begins to wonder if the residents are human. The Initiation: Daphne Zuniga stars in this 1984 slasher that takes place during an initiation sta...

Desert-Dwelling Bigfoot: Yucca Man

There are well known reports of Bigfoot wandering the American Northwest, the Sierras, the Rockies, the Mississippi River corridor and even Florida and the Northeast, but there are Bigfoot reported in deserts too. The assumptions that hair-covered humans would not live there is wrong. We know they are resistant to cold, why not heat? And, if Native Americans could live in such conditions, then surely these denizens of the wild could, too. The Joshua Tree Monument Park and Twenty-Nine Palms areas in the California desert has long had reports of people encountering a tall hairy man, described as a Bigfoot-type figure. In the early 70s, a man was supposedly being a guard officer at a facility in the Twenty-Nine Palms area. He saw something big emerge from the desert and poised his gun, warning it off. Instead of stopping, it stormed towards him and the man saw that it was a large hairy man. He was so shocked he didn't react and the hairy man knocked him unconscious. It was ...

The Most Bizarre Photographic Finds On Mars!

Mars explorers have sent back photos of some rather unusual, sometimes vague, and often times puzzling items on the surface of the "dead" planet. This has us wondering, if our own planet no longer supported life, would all the evidence of our having been here be covered up by a millennia of earth, leaving only the occasional hint someone might have been here? Here's a look at a large gallery of photos from the red planet. You come to your own conclusions.... Th e one above, I will chalk up to optical illusion. The stone is actually on the ground in the distance. In the foreground is a rock casting a shadow. Are we looking at a planet that seems to be dead and yet it has a history of life? What if a civilization that was quite advanced had the opportunity to leave a sick planet for a healthy one not so far away in terms of space travel? Is Mars a planet that never supported life or is it a planet that sustained life long enough to build an entire civilization now buried ...

Ghost Ships and Fata Morgana Mirages

Fata Morgana Fata Morgana is a complex superior mirage. In this instance, in the horizon a narrow band seen can separate an image, casting what looks like another image superior to the original object. In the image above it appears as if the ship is in the air. Below, the image shows a repeat of it up in the air. Sometimes, the image can be inverted. This occurs when rays of light are bent when they pass through layers that are different temperatures. Flying Dutchman This legend is talked about among sailors since the late 1700s. The tale says that there was a ship's captain sailing around the most dangerous ocean strait, the Cape of Good Hope. He cursed the elements and swore he would make it no matter what. The ship went down and all perished, but they are said to continue as a ghost ship for eternity in the region of the Southern tip of Africa because of the arrogance. In fact, the legend was picked up and modified for many countries and many sea locations. Perhaps it wa...

Monsters in the Sewers

There was a fantastic X-Files episode involving a sewer-dwelling monster. It was so creepy and distasteful that it almost fascinates the viewer to wonder, what the heck is down in our sewers? I grew up in the 70s when the talk of alligators in the sewers were rampant. The legend went, someone flushed a baby alligator down the toilet and it ended up occupying the sewers of New York City. There were a lot of variations of it, but one of those urban legends that leaves you checking out your toilet before you take a seat. In Florida, a man went out to get his male, heard something hissing at him, looked over at the sewer open and found an alligator sending him warning signals. This popular video below made the rounds on YouTube and other sites. It certainly gives one the chills to imagine that during a simple camera survey of an ancient sewer works they came across this - There are some explainable creatures that are still quite creepy that depend on the conditions found in sew...

The Urban Sasquatch Journal: Stick Glyphs

This is the reporting by a Bigfoot researcher of an ongoing study in the Southern part of the United States in a very large park area near homes and urban setting. LINK TO PRIOR INSTALLMENTS STARTING WITH #1 Journal Volume 3 Report #50 Saturday November 26, 2016 I arrived at the park approximately 9:52 AM. The temperature was 65 and cool. It was partly cloudy with high clouds. I had my bike with me and rode the trail first. This took 44 minutes. I was back to back to my car at 10:48 AM. I then got my pack then rode over to the site. The goal of the trail ride was to observe any new tree breaks, twists or limbs etc. broke over the trail. Also to see if any stick signs were along the trail in the grass. I did observe several interesting items on the east end. These I photographed. Trail ride observations with photos. These cover photos 1-8. #1. thru #3. Between mile markers 2.75 and 3.0 , on the north side of the trail, approximately 10' inside the treeline, these possible stick ...

GHOST HUNTERS

Search This Blog