the albany comic con report and ghost-hunting with james!

okay...

now that i finally have a small chance to breath here, i wanted to report on the two very cool things i was fortunate enough to be involved in this past weekend!
first and foremost, the albany comic con, which not only embodies the same love and celebration of comics as do heroescon in charlotte and the baltimore comiccon, but, for a small, still-getting-started, one-day show, continues to evolve around us, bringing back many familiar faces and drawing in new fans and friends each time! BIG thanks to con organizer john belskis for the patient and caring way he is growing this show and all the time and work he puts into it twice a year! yup, that's right! twice a year! so if you're thinking about making the trip for a show that still cares about comics, mark it on your calendars now for next spring!

i'd show pictures, but as i said, dropped my camera at matt's and haven't had a chance to go out and buy a new one...maybe this weekend...)

the continuation of all that fun on sunday was that sharon and tyler and i were invited to go on a ghost-hunt in nearby troy ny at an abandoned cemetery that touts a rep for being one of the hauntiest in the northeast. i say invited, but i feel like i kinda twisted my friend james (best)'s arm when he and luis (acevedo) and i were talking about this at the bar down in baltimore. james had heard about it and had been and, though i think it was an act, luis was claiming a scooby-doo-like reluctance to go.

it's been said to have a definite malevolent aura about it, that visitors experience an oppressive feeling of despair and woe, a certain surreal quality that makes you want to run out screaming...or stay forever.
it's been labelled one of the 7 earthly gates to hell.

we were joined by our other friend, tom stevens, and the six of us parked our cars well away from the posted private property signs and crept through the woods in the misty darkness toward the entrance to the rural cemetery. james, tyler, and i carried flashlights but were spare in using them as we didn't want anyone to see the lights bobbing eerily through the woods. the moon, dulled with a veil of fog, lent some light, but we were still startled when james turned his flashlight on to show us the dilapidated mausoleum that was suddenly looming before us.

it's huge--here's a photo of it in the daytime, but with nothing nearby to show scale. those arches are about 16 feet high each...





we navigated around it in the dark and now we were on the path that winds up the hill, small areas of plots here and there on either side make up the cemetery. stones dating back to the early 1800s were in understandable disrepair and some had fallen over. walking along this lane we would see, on either side, white and grey headstones and markers jutting up out of the underbrush, forgotten and forlorn. there were woods all around us.

heading farther up the trail, to the top of the hill, james directed us to the two more famous memorials in the cemetery, both of them majestic in their day, now sad testimonials to either time or vandals. the first is the angel statue, which must have been glorious in it's time, now headless and...creepy. we all stood in silence, the three flashlight beams playing over it. maybe about 7 or 8 yards beyond this, we could see another large monument brooding in the dark; a second memorial that was also headless.
later we said that we each felt a feeling of loss and sadness.

farther down the trail were more headstones, some large, some smaller, family groups and plots and an errant lonely stone here and there. the most recent i think we found was actually 1997--but aside from that one the stones seemed to tell of the cemetery being used very sparingly from around 1820 until 1953.





on the way out of the cemetery we spooked a small herd of deer that darted between the trees ahead of us and gave us a start. other than that, we saw no ghosts, felt no presences, and didn't even have any instances of letting our imaginations get away from us. it was spooky and creepy and, initially going in, it was thrilling. everyone was nervous--which was fun.
thanks for the great hunting trip, james!
it was great and we'll all never forget it.

i gotta go get some work done!
more from our pal, adam hutchinson tomorrow--so stop by!
and make sure you check out his offering from yesterday!
smell ya later!
todd