As a special gift for all your years of ongoing support, I’ve decided to offer up the Creature Feature instrumental song ‘Death Of A Doll Maker’ as a free download on our new Bandcamp page. When you go to our Bandcamp page and you click on the download link it will ask for your e-mail address and for you to set your own price, you can either pick zero or any type of donation (if you have any pennies to spare), but I’m making it available for free. So please download the song, tell your friends about it, e-mail about it, tweet about it, send your friends the link, etc. You’re one step away, just click the banner below to be magically whisked away to our new Bandcamp page where you can download the song free of charge.

Hope all is well,
~Curtis Rx

Here is another excerpt from a little book of death poems I am working on called ’101 Ways To Die, Accidents, Murders, And Other Techniques To Lose A Life.’ I wrote this back in May when I was watching a prom couple enjoying a fancy meal at the five star restaurant know as McDonald’s.

Thanks for reading,
~Curtis Rx

Well, the sailing stones aren’t a rock band, pun intended, and it isn’t a slang term for trust fund, ivy league kids who take to their yachts on the weekend, although these stones do sail frequently. The sailing stones are another great mystery of our time and a strange phenomenon found in a place called Racetrack Playa located in a lovely vacation spot known as Death Valley. A stone’s throw away from the Nevada border, Racetrack Playa is a dry, remote lakebed and home to a colony of mysterious stones that seem to move entirely on their own accord, as if manipulated by some unseen hand. The playa is nearly three miles long, a little over a mile wide, and is riddled with deep cracks, an unfortunate side effect of the blistering desert sun. These stones come in all shapes and sizes and leave a trail behind them in the dry sediment as they sail across the playa at an extremely slow pace over the course of several years. It seems that many theories have arisen as to how these stones could possibly be moving, but a true answer has never been set in stone.

A gaggle of Scientists already claim to have solved the mystery of these sailing stones. One such theory suggests that these mind-boggling stones do indeed sail, but it is by the hand of Mother Nature that they do so and not by that of invisible otherworldly being. They believe that it is her graceful command over the savage winds soaring through the playa that set these stones adrift. Since the lakebed itself is almost mathematically flat, only deviating by an inch or so over its entire three-mile stretch, this theory seems to be the logical answer. Granted, the wind in the playa can climb to an excess of eighty miles per hour, but it is still not enough force to set the larger stones in motion and the true force of wind it would actually take to move them is beyond impossible.

Another theory suggests that the phenomenon is actually caused by yearly rains that coat the lakebed, consisting of only a few inches at best, but aided by additional runoff from the surrounding mountainside. This water freezes during the harsh winter season, causing sheets of ice to form around the stones and drag them across the playa. This theory also sounds logical, but can easily be throw out due to the inconsistency of the tracks left behind the sailing stones as they wander off in other directions, sometimes even crisscrossing, instead of moving parallel like they would have to for this theory to be proven correct. Not to mention that the sheets of ice themselves would also leave additional trails in their wake as they join the stones in their quest across the playa floor.

Yet another theory suggests that the sailing stones don’t actually sail at all, but are instead moved by mischievous human hands and the occasional clumsy animal. This theory can also be easily dismissed upon inspection of the playa floor around the stones since no evidence of tampering or outside interference by cloak and dagger culprits can be found. In the less arid months when the Mojave Desert does see a minuscule amount of rainfall, the lakebed quickly turns into mud and any signs of human interaction would surely leave their impression in the playa floor, like a Hollywood actor immortalized forever by placing his footprints into wet cement. Last but not least, some of the larger stones weigh several hundred pounds and it would take the aid of machinery to move them, which would most definitely leave deep impressions in the surrounding clay.

To get the full story on why these sailing stones are slithering across Racetrack Playa, we’ll have jump back and forth throughout history. The sailing stones were discovered in the early 1900’s and the strange phenomenon causing them to move was first speculated to be the natural byproduct of magnetism. Amongst all the other theories tossed around, this was the first and the most likely to be correct, except for the fact that rocks themselves don’t have the properties to react to magnetism, but there still might be some truth to this theory. A few of the smaller stones have been studied exhaustively and the conclusion is quite shocking. It seems that these stones contain traces of a strange metal ore, similar to silver, but unlike anything else geologists have ever seen before. As opposed to ferrous metals, silver is not magnetic, but on occasion it will still react strangely when introduced into a magnetic field. This is exactly the case with the the peculiar metal marbled throughout the sailing stones, it is not magnetic, but it is mysteriously reacting to some sort of unknown field active within the area of Racetrack Playa. The earth itself has a large magnetic field, so it could just as easily be reacting to that, but accounts claim otherwise.

Even before the discovery of the sailing stones in the early 1900’s, fragments of this strange metal have been unearthed in the playa’s surrounding mountainside and carelessly taken as mementos, pocketed as intriguing trinkets, or sold along roadside curiosities shops. These artifacts are wrongly believed to be historical remnants from the time of the California Gold Rush or part of the now defunct railroads which used to spider across the Mojave Desert, but what are they really? Essentially they are believed to be a fossil of sorts, but not of any living organism and some evidence points to the area being home to a prehistoric crash site.

In 1935, the Mojave Desert found itself reliving the glory days of the great Gold Rush when a large gold vein was discovered in the immediate area. During the greed-crazed hoopla, Solomon Almquist, an adventurous miner and an expert geologist, was the first to discover this unknown and perplexing metal encased in the rocky mountainside. After years of heavy research and excavation, he released a chapbook with his findings entitled, When Will I Be Found, of which only three copies still exist today. Here is a direct quote pulled from that very chapbook, from one of the remaining copies in my personal collection. “I now have unequivocal proof that in a prehistoric era, long before mankind, an intelligence not of this earth crashed its flying craft somewhere in the rocky mountains of the Mojave Desert, but at that time it was not a barren wasteland, but instead, a treacherous and overgrown jungle.” As spoken of in this quote, Mr. Almquist claimed to have proof that over 65 million years ago a UFO malfunctioned and crashed somewhere in the vicinity of Racetrack Playa and throughout the years, it slowly began to break down and become encased in a death shroud of solid stone. The only problem is that Solomon Almquist and all of his research vanished completely, except for the three surviving copies of his chapbook.

For years upon years, the forgotten wreckage of this unknown spacecraft sat quietly as the world changed around it, until the day something seemed to activated it, something like a magnetic field. The only thing we know about this unknown metal is that it does react when introduced into a magnetic field, but not in the same way it’s reacting down at Racetrack Playa. Something in the vicinity is acting like a beacon, activating the metal fragments, and causing them to break free from their earthbound shackles, slowly pulling them towards the source of this magnetic field. Of course the speed at which these stones move is very minuet and only noticeable over the course of several years, but in late forties, this strange phenomenon began to speed up. The current rate at which the stones move is still unnoticeable to the human eye, but the new pace is drastically faster than before, as if it’s been supercharged.

Now, I know what most rational people would tend to think about such an unbelievable theory involving aliens tourists cruising around prehistoric times in their spaceships while dinosaur sightseeing, but great strides in technology have shed some frightening light on this story. With the advent of the Global Positioning System and its mapping capabilities, the once erratic paths left behind the sailing stones have been precisely mapped and a disturbing pattern emerged. The stones are all moving in the same general direction toward the Nevada border, and trust me when I say that they are not headed to Las Vegas to take in a show, because one hundred miles directly along this path lies—Area 51. You know, that infamous military base shrouded in secrecy and home to the alleged wreckage of the UFO that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Now, you put the clues together. These stones, which were once part of the mountainside, have broken free and began a slow journey across Racetrack Playa. Now factor in that the pace of the stones mysteriously began to increase in the late forties, just as the supposed Roswell UFO was sent to Area 51, which is within a hundred mile vicinity of Racetrack Playa.

Are the sailing stones pieces of a spacecraft that met its untimely demise during prehistoric times? Was the object that the crashed in Roswell, New Mexico really an extraterrestrial salvage vehicle sent on another mission to located the long vanished spacecraft, only to succumb to the same fate. Is the wreckage at Area 51 giving off a beacon in the form of a magnetic field to call its lost brother home?

Thanks for reading,
~Curtis Rx

Side Note: Solomon Almquist set up his own personal printing press and hand printed every copy of his chapbook When Will I Be Found. It is unknown why, but something made him stop after number fifty one and no further copies were printed.

Well, Zzyzx, pronounced “zei-zix”, isn’t just a tongue-twisting and nearly unpronounceable use of the English language, it’s also a mysterious settlement nestled in the blistering heart of Mojave Desert, near the California-Nevada border. On route to Las Vegas for a weekend of sin and debauchery, thousands of people per day speed down Interstate 15 and pass by a perplexing off-ramp sign that juts up from the shifting sands and points the way toward Zzyzx road. It always seems to elicit the same response— utter confusion, but if you are one of the brave few who decide to stray from the beaten path and tempt fate by driving down this endless road, you’ll eventually come to a collection of enigmatic springs that were once part of a prehistoric quarry site.

Zzyzx, proclaimed as the final word in the English language, was established in 1944 as the Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Spa after discovery of one of its numerous springs. It is said that the fresh water from one of these spring invigorates the body and has special, yet unexplainable, restorative properties. Due to word of mouth, a privileged few would make the pilgrimage there to anoint themselves in the healing waters and bottle extra for future purposes, one of which I am currently in possession of. In the mid-seventies, the Zzyzx Mineral Springs And Health Spa was abruptly shut down and the surrounding area reclaimed by the government, but its intriguing history reaches back much further than that.

Tales have been told about the these fateful springs as far back as 1860 when the area was a utilized as a US Army outpost. Various letters sent from the soldiers stationed there told stories of an invisible aura hovering over the place and mysterious electricity that seemed to reverberate through the sand. Some even describe amazing firsthand accounts of injured soldiers healing at an “unnatural rate” once they reached close proximity of the springs. It seems that the entire area caused a collective and contradictory feeling of calm and unease among the soldiers, almost as if good were colliding with evil.

Between the years 1905 and 1907 the Tonopah And Tidewater Railroad began to lay it’s rails across the Mojave Desert as a way to extract borax ore from the surrounding area. After scanning through databases from the local newspapers, I came upon a bizarre article from the same era describing a disturbing incident where a rail worker was severely injured when a stack of iron rails broke loose from its carriage, crushing his spine and causing irreversible paralysis from the waist down. After six days of labored breaths and death waiting by his bedside, the worker miraculously walked out of medical tent with only a few bruises and cuts to show for his harrowing experience.

Another intriguing story appeared sometime in the late fifties when the site was still being used as a mineral and health spa. A forty-eight year old man was reportedly horribly burned after a ruptured pipe from one of the mineral baths burst and blanketed him in boiling water. An eyewitness account attests that the man’s face, chest, and arms were badly burnt and his skin resembled “raw hamburger”. Because of the remote spa’s vicinity to the surround towns, there wasn’t a doctor for miles, so a female nurse, who had also been vacationing there, tended to his burns. She stated that in less than a week, the man “pulled out of his skin, like a reptile shedding” and looked as if the whole terrifying experience had never even happened. The man’s only complaint was that he was “unbearably thirsty”. This account comes from the actual nurse who watched over the man as he lay in agony and the same woman who eventually witnessed his rebirth—the man’s very own daughter.

The settlement formally known as “Zzyzx”, is now home to the Desert Studies Center, a field station for the California State University which supposedly conducts research on the desert environment, but what unnatural phenomenon have they really discovered there? Could the true fountain of youth and its life giving waters be hiding in a place known as Death Valley?

~Curtis Rx

This is the sequel to another poem I have posted on here called ‘A Curious Electricity’.

Thanks for reading,
~Curtis Rx

Well, the cleverly dubbed Montauk Monster is an unidentifiable rotting carcass that mysteriously washed ashore near, you guessed it—Montauk, New York. The story began on July 12th, 2008, as a group of friends went for a stroll along the tranquil shores of Montauk, when they happened upon the strange, decomposing husk of a creature crumpled in the sand. It was unlike anything they had ever seen before. It had webbed feet, a bird-like beak, and was completely hairless. A single photograph of the Montauk Monster was taken and history was made.

Once the curious photograph hit the media, a sea of speculation flowed forth as the vanilla flavored world quickly offered up their own theories; it was a sea turtle without its shell, an unfortunate canine drowned at sea, a curious raccoon who met its watery fate, a sea-swollen rodent ripe with larvae, a sheep with a horrible sense of direction, or a water logged and leather skinned surfer. No matter how probable these theories sound at first, not a single one of the above creatures could be matched to the characteristics of the beast in question, which eerily resembles a cross between two other legendary beasts, the Chupacabra and the Griffin.

This is the part where every cryptozoology tale grinds to a halt. In order to prove the existence of a new species of animal, a specimen must be present, but the Montauk Monster vanished entirely. The exact location where the creature was discover has never been ascertained, adding to the speculation, and not a single trace of its body was ever found.

Since the dawn of mankind, humans have quickly and methodically taken over the natural world, forcing animals from their native habitats. This has given rise to countless accounts of strange beast and quizzical creatures that defy all logic. Most have been debunked as amateur fakes, eyewitness accounts discovered to be simple misunderstandings, and monetary gain found numerous times to be the real monster. But no matter what theories people toss around concerning the Montauk Monster, one fact still remains. The creature washed ashore within swimming distance of the infamous—Plum Island.

Did it escape?

Did it flee for its life—or was it looking for prey?

Thanks for reading,
~Curtis Rx

Answer Accordingly,
~Curtis Rx

Well, Plum Island is an island, and it does have some plums on it, but that’s not weird enough for me to write about it. Let’s start with the basics. It’s a small island off the coast of New York, off the northeastern tip of Long Island. It is roughly three miles long, only a mile in width, at most, and totals eight hundred and forty acres. Sure, it was dubbed Plum Island because of the succulent beach plums that grow along the coastline, but the strange aura hovering over this place is anything but sweet. It has been called Mystery Island, Monster Island, and the non-fictional version of The Island Of Dr. Moreau, not because of its historic lighthouse and flavorful fruit, but because its home to a mysteriously laboratory, hidden away from peering eyes.

For years Plum Island changed hands, including one pivotal purchase in 1659 for the gargantuan cost of one coat, one barrel of biscuits, and one hundred fishhooks—what a steal. During World War II, the island became home to anti-submarine base and guns were installed on the shoreline to keep a watchful eye out for approaching German U-boats, warships, and planes. Then, in the mid-fifties, long after the passing of the war, Plum Island was sold to the United States Department of Agriculture, which then turned it into—Plum Island Animal Disease Center.

Animal disease center—what exactly do they do there? According to a press release, they research and diagnose to prevent catastrophic economic losses caused by foreign animal diseases, or F.A.D’s, accidentally or deliberately introduced into the United States. Here is their mission:

1.) Development of more sensitive and accurate methods of disease agent detection and identification.

2.) Development of new strategies to control disease epidemics, including rDNA vaccines, antiviral drugs, and transgenic, disease-resistant animals.

3.) The assessment of risks involved in importation of animals and animal products from countries where epidemic F.A.D’s. have occurred.

4.) Diagnostic investigations of suspect cases of F.A.D. outbreaks in U.S. livestock.

5.) Tests of animals in animal products to be imported into the U.S. to make sure those imports are free of F.A.D. agents

6.) Production and maintenance of reagents used in diagnostic tests and vaccines for F.A.D’s.

7.) Training of animal health professionals in the recognition and diagnosis of F.A.D’s.

Now, that sounds all nice and good, but a lot of what really goes on at Plum Island is shrouded in secrecy and conducted behind closed doors. Some eyewitness’ claim that the research done on the island is our first line of defense against foreign animal diseases, others claim that the island is the isolated playground for the creation of bio weapons. A mysterious file known as “Project Jefferson” seems to indicate an effort to develop a vaccine-resistant form of anthrax for use as a weapon against foreign invaders.

Trying to get a true account of the incidents at Plum Island is like trying to squeeze blood from a stone—or blood from a plum. The island has two docks and is only accessible by a government issued ferry. Any unsuspecting boaters and weekend warriors who naively wander too close to the dark island are quickly shoed away by armed military personnel and warned never to return, less they face dire consequences. Every single one of the two hundred employees are forced into a decontamination shower on arrival and departure from the island. Because of this and other strict security measures, the island boasts about their safety record and claim that not once in over fifty years of operation has a single animal pathogen escaped from the confines of the island.

Now, let’s move onto the strange and curious circumstances they seem to permeate the Plum Island. The first appearance of Lyme disease reared its ugly head 13 miles northeast of the island, not the luckiest of numbers. Unexplained appearances of the West Nile virus have haunted sections of Long Island and New York City. The rotten indistinguishable husks of unidentifiable animals have washed ashore on the surrounding coastline. Random occurrences of Foot And Mouth disease, along with numerous other puzzling happenings have detonated within close range of the island.

The powers that be behind Plum Island state that they work to protect farm animals, farmers, ranchers, the nation’s farm economy, export markets, and last but not least, our own food supply, but what are they really hiding?

Next time you indulge your taste buds with a tantalizing chicken nugget, you can rest assured that it is free from disease, but the true nature of Plum Island has yet to be uncovered.

It all started with a man named Adolf Hitler and the rise of the Nazi party. Between the years of 1939 and 1945, when the Nazi Germany began to lay waste to everything in their path, they employed some of the worlds most brilliant and evil scientists. Tucked away in underground facilities, these scientists would commit controversial and horrid experiments on animal and human alike. These experiments ranged from testing the body against mustard gas, hypothermia, malaria, bacterias, incendiary explosives, and poison. They even went as far as gene-splicing, fusing bodies together, and attempts to make severed body parts live free from their fleshy anchors and independent of any other living systems. Tales of disembodied arms taking on a life of their own and escaping along with severed heads that continue to stay alive long after their body has seized to exists run rampant. Very little proof of successful experiments exists, but there are a handful of pictures, and a disturbing piece of 8mm celluloid proving that Nazi scientists achieved their goal of fusing a second living head on to the body of a dog. Once, during a chance encounter at Coney Island with a traveling sideshow, I was privileged enough to view the last remaining frames of that very film. Clearly authentic, the scene in question, filmed sometime in the mid-fifties, takes place in a necropsy room, where the body of a canine with two heads awakens from slumber and begins to bark—from both mouths.

You might already be asking, what does this have to do with Plum Island? The answer is, everything. After the death of Adolf Hitler and the abolishment of the Nazi party, all traces of the infamous German scientists and their blasphemous creations entirely disappeared. If you put the pieces together, connect the dots, and factor in a series of baffling Morse code messages sent from somewhere on the island during the early sixties, then you come to the true conclusion. The island is a modern day Alcatraz and the missing scientists, after being captured and disguised, were sent to the island where they have been forced to continue their grisly work to this day. Who knows what strides they have made in there research, what creatures they have created. For now we are safe, but all it will take is an upheaval, an act of sabotage, outbreak, or a hurricane, and all hell will break loose—literally.

True horror, it seems, abounds on Plum Island.

~Curtis Rx

Well, The Great Blue Hole is exactly what you’d think it is. It’s a great big blue hole off the coast of Belize in the country of Central America. You know, those other Americas below us, the ones with less Starbucks. That’s the two-cent definition, but let’s dig deeper—literally.

The Great Blue Hole is one of nature’s most beautiful accidents. It is really just a huge underwater sinkhole, but just like any of Mother Nature’s anomalies, it’s breathtaking. The sinkhole is almost perfectly circular in shape and runs just shy of one thousand feet across, and over four hundred feet in depth. Once just your everyday average twisted system of limestone caverns, it was formed during the last glacial period when the sea levels drastically began to lower and form into glaciers—get it, “glacial period”? Now it all makes sense. Mix a constant barrage of fresh water with the limestone surface of the seabed becoming exposed to the elements and after awhile you get—caverns. Fast forward some time later, the oceans begin to rise and gravity begins to take its toll, causing the roof to collapse, flooding the hollow system of caverns. This drastic change in depth is what give The Great Blue Hole its memorizing two-tone color effect, the dark blue of the deep water surrounded by the turquoise of the shallow water—like the earth sprouted a pupil to keep a watchful eye on the human race.

Nowadays, the Great Blue Hole is a popular tourist spot for scuba diving, but I have a different theory on what it really is.

Through years of tireless research and run-ins with Central American authorities, I have reason to believe that The Great Blue Hole is home to a great otherworldly monster, that slumbers quietly in the depths of the sinkhole, like it has for tens of thousands of years, before digital television, before the Brothers of Jonas, before mankind. There, in the deep, still waters of the Caribbean, the beast awaits the day when the sandman releases it from the clutches of lethargy and it can once again rises to wreak havoc on the world.

Cloverfield ain’t got nothing on the Great Blue Hole.

~Curtis Rx