The Bell County Incident

Our psychiatric hospital is not entirely suited to cases of dementia, and I have little doubt that one patient here pushing nearly 100 years old is suffering from some mental ailment associated with his advanced years. Surely his anecdotes are the product of a sickness, but I will admit that his story is corroborated by another tale I was able to piece together from several folklorists in rural Appalachia.

Figure 4.1 - Former ____ ______ Mental Hospital staff prepare for a patient autopsy, 1951.

The Bell County Incident

     Far back in a holler, in the shadows of a mountain shunned even by the Indians before the arrival of the white man, lived a pair of brothers, bachelors and crotchety old bastards named Eber and Shem. One long and lean, the other short and fat, the brothers both had stringy hair and long beards and piercing eyes but something other than their unkempt appearance frightened the locals.

     There were the rumors, for sure. Of slaughtered livestock in those hills, and of blood-curdling howls under the harvest moon. And then there were the whispers – two Godless old bachelors are sure to attract attention anywhere – but most folks respected Eber and Shem on some strange level. There seemed to be a mutual understanding that the occasional calf or mare found butchered was preferable to a murdered child.

Figure 4.2 - Revenuers dump illegal hooch circa 1925

     
     Apart from their trips to town they likely would have been forgotten altogether if the brothers hadn’t made the finest mountain dew this side of the Cumberland Gap. This was shortly after the repeal of the Volstead Act but a quality jug of moonshine was still worth its weight in gold. Plenty of folks made the trip back to Eber and Shem’s holler for a bottle of hooch – but none visited after dark and sure as hell never made the trip on a full moon. 

     That’s not to say there wasn’t drinking on full moons in Bell County – there was more than most, but it wasn’t the joyous, sociable kind of drinking. It was more a lock the livestock in the barn, bar the doors and clutch your shotgun sort of drinking.

Figure 4.3 - Another unsolicited visit from a "revenuer"

     And then there were the revenuers. Drink wasn’t illegal, but it was if you sold it without cutting in Uncle Sam with taxes. The federal boys started sniffing around the county – Eber and Shem had a minor local notoriety as local eccentrics and probable lycanthropes but had amassed a considerable degree of genuine fame as bootleggers not only in the state but surrounding states.

     Now everyone around feared Eber and Shem, but everyone also resented the creeping federal influence into the mountains. I don’t think it was a coincidence that the college boys were finally tipped off about the whereabouts of Eber and Shem during a full moon that October of 1934. What exactly happened that night whenever the Ford full of G-men, accompanied with one of the most prominent revenuers in the state, pulled up to Eber and Shem’s place is still anyone’s guess.

Figure 4.4 - The revenuers strike again

     Some say two survived out of eight men – and that of the two survivors, one died not long afterward from his wounds. The other ended his career as a revenue man and was scarred for life. No one knows who tipped off the feds, but no doubt many in the county wouldn’t have minded for the werewolves and the revenuers to both be gone for good.

     At least partially, that did hold to be true - Eber and Shem disappeared and were never seen again.

***

     Having been told the various versions of the story (and my own version is a composite), one of the only consistencies was of a sole survivor, badly injured, who never again worked as a revenuer. And in our patient I couldn’t help but notice the tell-tale old scars on his left cheek – perhaps claws, perhaps something else. His own tale is rather disjointed, a loose collection of waking nightmares involving those “damned whiskey boys”.

Figure 4.5 - The surviving revenuer, who was said to take on unusual physical characteristics after the infamous Bell County Raid, in 1937

     We are currently not best suited to fit his needs - every full moon he experiences a temporary psychosis and wanders away from our facility, necessitating a Silver Alert nearly every month. There is a quaint little rest home, not far from here, which I think will be far more appropriate. It has admittedly not been without its own incidents in the past but I think it’ll be suitable place for our retired revenuer.

Figure 4.6 - A former orderly of ____ ______ prepares a light afternoon snack for one of the many guests

Night of the Lunkheads

       This subject is now well into his 40’s – a chubby, balding pathetic thing who spends most of his days and all of his nights whimpering in the corner of his padded cell about the “Lunkheads” peeking into his barred window.

       Here is a local newspaper article detailing the quite sad and cheerless history of poor little Mr. Billy Robert Tilly. As with our other cases some of the names of victims have been changed or omitted.

Figure 3.1 - Document detailing some of the past experiments involving ____ ______ Mental Hospital and its staff

Night of the Lunkheads

The Weller Register, October 28th, 1991
Babs Saunders, associate reporter

     Let’s be honest folks, summers here have always hot and humid and miserable! Our children have never seemed to mind too much, I remember how the Baker boys, Julie Scott and her sisters and other kids from Central used to raise Cain up and down the black top road stretching from the municipal park to Elsberry Creek. That stretch of Copley Road back then was overgrown and rugged but still dotted by a few gas stations and the high school baseball field (go Tigers!). This was long before the convenience and ease of open-air shopping malls and MONDO-Mart centers – back whenever we were just another little hick town, and not the booming and charming bedroom community of today.

     Back then once you went past Elsberry Creek the road got rougher, the terrain hairier. The trees got taller and more gnarled, the only signs of human life the occasional beaten up farmhouse well off the road. A lonely two lane jaunt of a few miles until you hit the bridge going over the interstate. Back then that part of Copley Road wasn’t shunned, but nobody went out of their way to travel it either (I know I sure didn’t!).

     The kids never did – there was something scary and gloomy about the way the branches of trees knotted over Copley Road. There had always been the rumors – a lot of silliness about “Lunkheads” - shy, ghoulish creatures said to have big black eyes (BOO!).

Figure 3.2 - An example of hydrocephalus, frequently cited as a rational explanation to the "Lunkhead" phenomena

     No, but seriously, after the three children went missing that winter in 1979, their bodies later found not far from the interstate in the woods near Copley and Stratton Road, there were the whispers from the older folks. I have always said there is a time and place for ghost stories, and a time and place for grown-up ghost stories. Unfortunately, one of our wonderful children at the time had trouble differentiating between the two.

     I’m showing my age but I clearly remember that spring we heard about the brand new interstate exit to Weller – and talk of the rising property values, new jobs and businesses that were sure to follow. In fact it only took a few months for the signs of life to start showing down Copley Road – but imagine my horror as a loving mother and parent at the announcement of a new video arcade parlor, Dualtron, to be built at the exit. This is the original text for a Dualtron advertisement which popped up in a March, 1981 edition of the Weller Register:

Figure 3.3 - An artist's interpretation of Polybius, a game allegedly housed at the Dualtron at the time of the infamous "Night of the Lunkheads"

Apocalypse A.D. - Venture back into the long abandoned cities to rescue your family from the humanoid plague. With brand new Periscope Viewfinder!

Lords of Carnage III - The Lords have returned to wreck vengeance on the Nuclear Church! Both one and two player mode!

The Golden Triangle - Can you move the small white circles out of the large yellow triangle?

Soviet Death Force - Escape the Iron Curtain and evade the Soviet Death Force!

Polybius – Can you destroy all the spinning polygons and triangles and find your way out of the maze? 

Giallo Murder Mystery IV - The police and killer are looking for you. Can you solve the Giallo Murder Mystery IV?

Space Violators II - The space violators are returning to Earth, do you have what it takes to defeat them?

Pinball Machines! Hockey Enforcer II, Beach Babe Patrol, Driller Killer, Canadian Mounty, Frankenstein’s Castle

     Violators. Plague. Murder. Death. Carnage. Destroy. And, of course, beach babes and driller killers! These are the sorts of values being instilled in our children?  I do know one thing. Our little ones never travelled past Elsberry Creek until then – I’ll never forget how I felt the first time I saw those tikes riding bicycles up and down that abandoned three mile stretch of Copley Road to reach the interstate and the Dualtron Arcade. 

     And then there was the Night of the Lunkheads, as it came to be known later on during the trial of Billy Tilly in the gruesome murders of four other children that attended Central. For those of you who missed all the news stories following the July murders in 1982 (covered throughout the tri-state area), Carol Petersen, Patrick Brooks, Glenn Newbury and Joyce Harris (all little angels from Central) were found mangled and mutilated in the woods near Copley Road. William Tilly was found nearby covered with blood and muttering about the “Lunkheads”.
 

Figure 3.4 - An arcade video machine salvaged from the Dualtron arcade. Could this have inspired Billy Tilly to commit mass murder?

         I knew William Tilly as an adorable little cherub with rosy cheeks and a heart of gold. He played fourth grade baseball and basketball for Central, and regularly attended my church with his family. What could have gone so wrong? Due to the grisly and horrific nature of the crimes, Tilly was prosecuted as an adult. A transcript of his testimony, as recorded by the court stenographer on January 26^th, 1983: 

         Cross Examination of William R. Tilly

Let the record reflect the presence of the jury at 1:03 p.m.

THE CLERK:        Please Mr. Tilly state your name for the record.

MR. TILLY:           William Robert Tilly

THE CLERK:        Thank you Mr. Tilly.

CROSS EXAMINATION

MR. HEWITT:   On the night in question, July 22, 1981, you indicated that you left the Dualtron Arcade with Misses Petersen and Harris and Misters Brooks and Newbury?

A                            I did.

Q                           Yes or no will do, son.

A                            Yes.

Q                           And you claimed that this was approximately ten o’clock at night, and you had stayed out past curfew?

A                           Yes.

Q                          You claim that near the intersection of Oldfield Road and Copley Road, you and the victims left your bicycles and went into the woods?

A                           Yes.

Q                          You claimed that this was the “Night of the Lunkheads” (some laughter in courtroom). Mr. Tilly, what do you purport a “Lunkhead” to be?

A                          We just saw eyes, I mean, there were dark eyes staring at us from the woods. I never believed the stories either, they were, there were about seven or eight of them.

Q                          The Lunkheads? Mr. Tilly, you are not answering my question.

A                           The Lunkheads, are, or well, were short, with pale skin and big black eyes and big heads. They were, they appeared to be not human.

Q                           Mr. Tilly, what happened to your friends that night?

A                            They were attacked, well, killed by the Lunkheads. As soon as we stopped our bikes more came from behind us, we tried, well, we did run into the woods but there were more of them. They’re still, I mean, they’re still in those woods.

Q                           Who are still in those woods, Mr. Tilly?

A                            The Lunkheads.

Q                            I am finished with my cross examination.

***

     I’ve always been a big fan of the latest high profile trials (mostly murders but I’ll settle for a good robbery or rape if need be) and I followed the Billy Tilly trial like a hawk. I really thought at first an outsider (of Weller, certainly not an outsider of this dimension or planet!) had attacked and killed those poor children. As the trial went on for a couple months I had to admit to myself the God honest truth - poor little Billy Tilly was a murderer.

     The court ultimately decided that Tilly was not guilty by reason of insanity, and that at the time of the murders, Mr. Tilly “did not possess a state of mind conducive to understanding the nature and impact of his actions due to repeated exposure to video arcade machines”.

Figure 3.5 - An amusing recent puzzle take-off on the "Lunkheads" phenomena. Can you find the six "Lunkheads" hiding in this picture? Bonus: Can you find the "S" graffiti on the tree?

     And oh boy, were we Wellerites not happy about that! The decision was so controversial that Tilly was committed to an undisclosed mental asylum, the name of which has still not been released to area newspapers. William Tilly (now in his early 20’s) will be released whenever mental health experts deem him to no longer be a threat to society.

     It’s been nearly a decade now – the Dualtron has long since closed, Tilly is still committed, and the children still ride their bicycles up and down Copley Road - but not past Elsberry Creek. That’s all changing soon – the woods up and down Copley Road are being bulldozed for the Pine Springs Shopping Plaza, Twin Oaks Minimall, a MONDO-Mart Center, a Giuseppe’s Pizza Pie franchise location and several housing subdivisions.

Figure 3.6 - Several of the video arcade machines from Dualtron said to have inspired the Billy Tilly murders have become popular and highly sought-after pieces of "murderabilia"

     The husband and yours truly are enjoying our new home on that once spooky, scary section of Copley Road (BOO!). It’s nice to see the folks of Weller put the past behind us, even as my youngest darling, precocious child complains that the Lunkheads are looking into her window every night!

***

     A rather tragic ending for poor little Mr. Billy Robert Tilly. He remains in our care, and he always will. As for the notorious Weller child murders? Several “copycats” of Mr. Tilly have murdered nine more children in a similar fashion since this article by Mrs. Saunders was published as a local piece for Halloween in 1991.

As for the Lunkheads just remember to check outside your house tonight before you go to sleep for any short, pale creatures with huge heads and big, black eyes (BOO!).

Figure 3.7 - Up the stairs and to the right for the ____ ______ Mental Hospital game and rec room. And no, poor little Billy Tilly has never been given access to our video arcade machines...

Confidence, Polyglotism and Hitler's Missing Testicle - Notes from a Traveler

 In spite of my extensive travels I have made a point of never learning or using the local native language – not even the most basic of introductory greetings. Polyglotism amongst native English speakers is considered, at best, an indication of weakness to the loose officials and corrupt women a Westerner so often encounters in the second and third world…

My resident procurer, Sven Svensen of the Stockholm Natural History Museum, is renowned for his expertise in Pre-Columbian death cults and enjoys a certain international infamy for his lucrative business as an exotic provider of mistresses for dictators worldwide. 

As a young man the slender Swede enjoyed some measure of popularity as a rent-boy amongst the higher Nazi echelon but it was his Leningrad tryst with the alleged beard of a Georgian NKVD officer that allowed him to smuggle the Soviets' most prized possession out of a vault from underneath the Kremlin, a well-preserved memento from their Great Patriotic War – Adolf Hitler’s lone testicle…


 

Smut, political cartoon, failed visual analogy or all (or none) of the above? You be the judge

As in polite Western society, abroad I have found that confidence, and arrogantly acting as though you know what you are doing even though you do not, is always effective…

The Drunk

     

     She’s an elderly woman with one foot in the grave, the other in the saloon. Regularly in and out of our substance abuse ward, her story goes to show that some cautionary tales, no matter how horrifying, are simply not terribly effective to an accomplished addict. This is the story of the drunk. 

Figure 2.1 - A charming photograph showing former ____ ______ Mental Hospital staff performing a lobotomy.

The Drunk

The woman and the other two men at the bar that particular night were certified drunks, and drunks amongst drunks. There are the open mic amateur night drinkers, there are the weekend warriors, and there are those sad souls in the trenches drinking alone on any given Tuesday night. And then there are the drunks. These are the addicts who take their addiction and self destruction to nearly poetic levels. And this woman and the two men were all drunks.

The bane of any addict is the necessary acquisition of more of the addictive substance. This is the cross to carry for any addict – and for a drunk that means never-ending trips to gas stations for beer, to liquor stores for booze. And the sizeable amount of money this eventually requires has driven otherwise reasonable men and women to humiliation through canned heat, mouthwash, rubbing alcohol, etc.

     They call them the jitterbugs, the DTs, the creepy crawlies, the pink elephants. This is the second cross to carry for the addict – withdrawal. Alcohol withdrawal is the worst drug withdrawal, and the only withdrawal which can actually kill the addict. And our drunks were out of their addictive substance, and out of money and on the cusp of the throes of withdrawal. 

Enter the stranger, maybe a little on the lanky side but handsome. A tall man in a cowboy hat, a cowboy with a charming manner and more than enough money to spare for a round of beers, two rounds of beer. And another round of beer and shots of whiskey for good measure. As the beer and whiskey flowed and delight and delirium overtook the woman, she was more than happy to take up the cowboy on his invitation to dance. And they danced. Several songs, each faster and more uptempo than the last. Another few beers and another few shots and more dancing, so fast and dizzying that she felt she may nearly collapse.

And then the joy of alcoholic stupor gave way to something quite disturbing as she noticed the stranger did not possess feet, but hooves. This, of course, is the point at which she had her moment of clarity, abandoned the party and promised to never touch a drop again. Her friends were not quite so fortunate. Joining the cowboy for a trip down 16 to Rodeo Clown Liquor, they were killed in a vehicle head-on collision. Two mangled corpses were pulled from the wreckage but the cowboy’s body was never found, and he was never seen again.

Figure 2.2 - A quaint inset from a larger vintage color magazine advertisement for a long defunct local liquor store, Rodeo Clown Liquor

***

     And our heroine stayed true to her word, and stayed sober? No. She is still a drunk, and drinks daily to this day. From a long line of drinkers, she’s said to prefer a certain variety of Appalachian moonshine that’ll make you howl at the moon. As for the effectiveness of this cautionary tale? I’ve already killed a six pack of beer from MONDO-Mart as I’ve typed it.

Figure 2.3 - A residence hall of ____ ______ Mental Hospital. Always room for one more...

Glade Air Freshener or Blue Moon Beer Variation?

In a brief departure from the good doctor's generalized spookiness, a bit of trivia from the hottest new phenomenon overtaking the country - Glade Air Freshener or Blue Moon Beer Variation?

Can you differentiate a variety of A) Glade Air Freshener from B) a specialized version of Blue Moon beer? The following twelve, six from each category, have been randomized with the answer key below.


Pure Vanilla Joy
Pineapple & Mangosteen
Spiced Amber
Agave Nectar
Creamy Custard
Cashmere Woods
Dark Chocolate Bacon
Raspberry Cream
Orchard Apple Cinnamon
Harvest Moon Pumpkin
Jubilant Rose
Blackberry Tart
























Answer Key:   

Pure Vanilla Joy - Glade
Pineapple & Mangosteen - Glade
Spiced Amber - Blue Moon
Agave Nectar - Blue Moon
Creamy Custard - Glade
Cashmere Woods - Glade
Dark Chocolate Bacon - Blue Moon
Raspberry Cream - Blue Moon
Orchard Apple Cinnamon - Glade
Harvest Moon Pumpkin - Blue Moon
Jubilant Rose - Glade
Blackberry Tart - Blue Moon