warren says, "I didn't make this up..."

okay...

on the topic of creating new hoaxes and myths and legends, i received this in an email from our good pal warren newsom, subject line reading;

I didn't Make This Up...

(…the great Manly Wade Wellman did.  The photo is a composite.)

“If the gardinel's an old folks' tale, I'm honest to tell you it's a true one.

Few words about them are best, I should reckon. They look some way like a shed or cabin, snug and rightly made, except the open door might could be a mouth, the two little windows might could be eyes. Never you'll see one on main roads or near towns; only back in the thicketty places, by high trails among tall ridges, and they show themselves there when it rains and storms and a lone rarer hopes to come to a house to shelter him.

The few that's lucky enough to have gone into a gardinel and win out again, helped maybe by friends with axes and corn knives to chop in to them, tell that inside it's pinky-walled and dippy-floored, with on the floor all the skulls and bones of those who never did win out; and from the floor and the walls come spouting rivers of wet juice that stings, and as they tell this, why, all at once you know that inside a gardinel is like a stomach.

Down in the lowlands I've seen things grow they name the Venus flytrap and the pitcher plant, that can tole in bugs and flies to eat. It's just a possible chance that the gardinel is some way the same species, only it's so big it can tole in people.

Gardinel. Why they're named that I can't tell you, so don't inquire me.”

-- Manly Wade Wellman, “Farther Down the Trail”

From the short story collection, John the Balladeer

and just like that, warren creeps me right out!

well played, my friend~!

anybody else got one...?

have a good monday~

smell ya later~!

todd