Allow me to start off by saying that I’m an all-around, card-carrying skeptic. Sagan is my bread and Randi is my butter. That said, I loves me some ghost stories. An interest in the paranormal and weirdness is what made me a skeptic, after all.
One of my favorite things to do is to listen to scary stories and one of my favorite sources for scary stories is the Anything Ghost podcast, which is charmingly straightforward. Nine out of ten of the listener stories he recounts seem to be your classic sleep paralysis tales, but occasionally you get something a little more chilling (there was this a full on “get out of my room” story about a dead sister in the latest). It helps that I tend to listen before dawn while jogging or walking the dog.
This isn’t really about a ghost story, but on the second part of his annual Halloween program, he rebroadcast a story from another podcast about a haunting in Hickory, Pa., which is on the opposite side of the commonwealth from yours truly.
I’ve never heard of Hickory before, but it was described as a pre-Revolutionary town amid the mountains of the Alleghenies. Since I always wanted to be a Lovecraftian protagonist, my antiquarian heart was all aflutter over the possibilities of casting eyes upon the relics of an ancient borough–so I popped it up on Google maps when I got back from my jog. Turns out, it is just a census designated place in the hills just south of Da Burgh. Home to
What caught my eye was a lovely little anomaly–see it?
Meanwhile, in Hickory
ENHANCE!
What Do on Dire?
Something weird is going on at the end of Dire Drive, a remote little cul-de-sac community that the Google car didn’t even bother to drive down. Is it a cool satellite lens flare, a holy sign or, perhaps, Boba Fett entering the atmosphere? (C’mon, Slave 1, anyone?) Here’s a look from another map service:
I can’t see what it was reflecting off of here, though. I was expecting solar panels, but none of the other maps show anything. Weird.