BOO!

If you're wondering what in Sam Hill is going on in America (and who isn't nowadays), there's a Sam Hill Society in Arkansas devoted to charity work. If you're wondering what in hell is going on in Romania (and who isn't nowadays), there's a Society of Dracula building a Dracula theme park.

Romania's Prime Minister is backing the project and talking about a Gothic castle, hotel, golf course, a lot of scary dark rides, and 3000 new jobs.

But not everyone is happy.  UNESCO Secretary-General Koichiro Matsura is afraid the $30-million park will attract weirdos.

Crypt kickers, maybe, but not weirdos.

Weirdos, according to ancient superstition, were malignant ghosts who often took the form of a wolf.  Two books on the subject were written by Montague Summers, a Catholic priest in England.  He called his two books "factual accounts of the undead."  Abraham "Bram" Stoker, who wrote "Dracula," penned short stories about the undead for children.

Nice guy.

"You don't believe in me?" a ghost asked Ebenezer Scrooge.

"I don't," said Scrooge.

"What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?"

"I don't know," said Scrooge.

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because a little thing effects them.  A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats.  You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.  There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are."

"It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk about among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is to do so after death.  It is doomed to wander through the world --- oh, woe is me --- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth and turned to happiness."

 

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