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Post by madeline on Nov 23, 2013 16:42:25 GMT -5
I knew that he had a bad back and that he was trying to hide how bad it was along with his Addison's Disease. There were a lot of specials about him on TV this week, but I don't think that the brace was mentioned, even though they went into detail about his back problems, which weren't from the PT boat crash, like the family said, but from the steroids that he was taking for his Addison's Disease. One of the shows talked about his back surgery back in the 50s and that he almost died from it. The shirt that he was wearing that day and other items are at the National Archives, I wonder if his back brace is there too, or if his family is still trying to keep his condition from the American public? On one of the shows, they talked about the huge amount of drugs, including uppers, that he had to take while he was in the White House.
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Post by madeline on Nov 17, 2013 16:56:46 GMT -5
I've never seen a Johnny Depp movie that I liked and he was a poor choice for Dillinger.
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Post by madeline on Nov 17, 2013 16:53:37 GMT -5
Whoever drew the picture doesn't know much about vampires because vampires don't cast shadows.
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Post by madeline on Nov 11, 2013 14:13:58 GMT -5
The Dark Shadows Festival for 2014 will be held in Tarrytown, New York, the weekend of June 28 and 29 at the Hilton Double Tree Hotel. This is the same hotel where it was last year and it's much better than the Marriott where it was held in 2007 when we went for the very first time.
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Post by madeline on Nov 11, 2013 14:04:32 GMT -5
I've seen pictures of mothers and newborns in the same coffin, but I think that this is the first picture I've seen of a whole family in the same coffin.
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Post by madeline on Nov 11, 2013 14:02:42 GMT -5
What Jason said!
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Post by madeline on Oct 30, 2013 13:22:42 GMT -5
While we were at Jekyll Island, we went on a trolley tour of Jekyll Island, which was in the daytime, and two nighttime trolley ghost tours, one of Jekyll and one of St. Simons Island. We also went to the St. Simons Lighthouse, which is haunted by the ghost of a lighthouse keeper, who was murdered by the assistant keeper. One of the most interesting haunted places was Christ Episcopal Church on St. Simons, which has a spook light in the cemetery that is said to be the light of a lantern that a husband placed on his wife's grave every night because she had been afraid of the dark. Another interesting ghost on St. Simons is Mary the Wanderer, who rides a white horse along the roads of the island carrying a lantern searching for her young man, who was lost at sea. One of the ghosts at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel, where we stayed, is General Aspinwall, who haunts a room that has been converted to a closed in porch. Samuel Spencer, who died in a train accident in 1906, haunts his old suite at the hotel. Rooms 2416 and 3101 are also haunted and a ghostly bellhop, dressed like they did in the 1920s, haunts the 2nd floor. We were on the second floor, but we didn't see him. JP Morgan haunts Sans Souci Cottage, which is part of the hotel. The Cherokee Cottage, which is now part of the hotel, was built by Edward Gould for his wife's parents, the Shradys. Their grandson, Eddie Gould, and his brother loved to visit them. Eddie was killed in a hunting accident when he was a teenager and people say that the door to the room he always slept in sometimes opens by itself. People also smell the scent of roses, which was Hester Shrady's favorite scent. Both the main dining room and the Crane Cottage restaurant at the Jekyll Island Club are great. One night, we drove 20 miles to The Georgian Room at The Cloister on Sea Island, which is supposed to be a 5-star restaurant and we all had the venison, but it really wasn't any better than the food at our hotel.
We went on a ghost tour of downtown St. Augustine and we've also been to the lighthouse and Lee has taken us to some other haunted places, such as the "murder house," which is just across the street, where someone chopped up a woman with a machete back in 1974 and they never caught who did it. Catherine and Kate are staying with Lee in her extra bedroom and Julia and I are staying at the Casa Monica Hotel, which is about 5 blocks away. It was cool last week and the first part of this week, but it's supposed to be warm again today and tomorrow. We liked the cool weather because it's easier to walk in cool weather than when it's hot. Just about everything in St. Augustine is supposed to be haunted and there are a LOT of tours and people walking around and sightseeing. There were a lot of good restaurants on Jekyll and St. Simons Island and there are a lot in St. Augustine, too. The restaurant here at the hotel is decorated like an old dark castle with reproduction Jacobean furniture. We've had dinner here a couple of times and we have reservations for Halloween night. Last night, we ate at a place called Harry's Seafood Grille. The food isn't that great, but the restaurant is in a haunted building where people have seen strange shadows and the women's bathroom is haunted. Tonight, we're eating at a place called The Raintree. St. Augustine is full of golden raintrees and they're beautiful this time of year when part of their foliage is turning. Lee has a huge golden raintree in her yard that must be 40 feet tall. Next spring, I'm going to plant a couple.We've stayed in character the entire time, but it's a little harder to do here in St. Augustine because it's a small town and Lee knows a lot of people and they expect her to introduce us.
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Post by madeline on Oct 17, 2013 11:07:22 GMT -5
It is hard to find where it is now and newcomers won't know about it. I suggest making a special board for the contest up at the top where the Thoughts for the Day are.
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Post by madeline on Oct 8, 2013 15:27:40 GMT -5
It's getting close to Halloween and I'm sure a lot of people would like some new recipes - especially some new Halloween drinks! What about it, Kate?
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Post by madeline on Oct 8, 2013 15:18:03 GMT -5
When we went to England, I so wanted to visit Haworth and the Bronte Parsonage, but we just couldn't fit it in. We would have had to visit on the way from Whitby to Cumbria and it would have been way out of the way. We checked and the accommodations in that area weren't great either. Maybe next time.....
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Post by madeline on Oct 1, 2013 13:47:47 GMT -5
We went to Highgate when we were in England in 2009 and we went to both the east and west sides. The east side is closed except to organized tours and we had made arrangements for a tour guide to take our group on a private tour, but you can wander around on your own on the west side.
I had always thought that Highgate was the cemetery in Dracula, where Lucy was buried, but while we were in England, some of the others said that it wasn't Highgate, but another cemetery called Hampstead. Lee, Julia and Joe and some Americans that we met at the hotel went to Hampstead on the same morning that those of us who had never been to England before went to the Tower of London. I would have loved to go with them, but we just didn't have enough time to fit everything in and I didn't want to miss the Tower, even though we didn't see everything because we were only there for the one morning. Maybe next time......
That man in the photo looks like Barnabas Collins! Who is he?
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Post by madeline on Sept 24, 2013 12:40:00 GMT -5
Although I wasn't born when Dark Shadows was on TV, I began watching the reruns when I was a child and I became completely addicted. I couldn't wait until the next day to see what happened next. Then when it became available on VHS, I ordered the tapes, then I ordered the DVDs and I have the entire series on DVD.
In 2007, right after the old group that we had on Yahoo started, the one called Mysteries Unsolved, four of us, Lee, Catherine, Kate and I, decided to go to the Dark Shadows festival in Tarrytown, NY that summer even though none of us had ever even met each other and we met Julia at the festival and the five of us have been taking a "Dark Shadows Trip" every year since then. At the 2007 festival, we were all dressed in black, like the DS ladies did when they attended a funeral, and we went for dinner at Equus Restaurant at the Castle at Tarrytown, which is an old Hudson River mansion that has been turned into a hotel and restaurant, and everyone mistook us for members of the Brooke Astor funeral party because she had been buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which is very near Tarrytown, that day and the manager of the hotel showed us around the hotel, which is supposed to be haunted. Every year since, we've first gone to the festival, which is usually on the east coast in odd years and the west coast in even years, but last year, because of Jonathan Frid's death in April, it was held in Tarrytown again. We first go to the festival and then we go to Maine and spend a week at Bar Harbor or some other place on the coast of Maine. We dress and act like the women on DS did in the late 1960s episodes and we stay in character for the entire trip. Julia lives in Maine, so we leave a lot of our DS outfits at her house during the year so that we don't have to carry a lot of luggage. This year, there wasn't a DS festival in the summer, instead, there's going to be a Caribbean cruise in October, but we didn't think that cruising in the Caribbean was much of a DS activity, so we're going to spend the last two weeks of October in St. Augustine, where Lee lives, and another week at the Jekyll Island Club in Georgia and combine Dark Shadows and Halloween!
The Dark Shadows movie was an insult. Tim Burton said that it wasn't supposed to be a comedy, but it certainly wasn't serious and if it was supposed to be a comedy, it missed the point because there was nothing funny about it. Johnny Depp looked and acted more like Michael Jackson than Barnabas Collins. I've never liked anything that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp did and before they ever made the movie, a lot of us in the group said that they would mess things up and they did.
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Mabon
Sept 22, 2013 14:44:34 GMT -5
Post by madeline on Sept 22, 2013 14:44:34 GMT -5
I wish that I could interest enough women where I live to form a group like Kate's, but I live in a small town in Alabama and even though a lot of women do spells when they want something, no one has ever tried to organize a coven. Like Kate, I prefer Hoodoo because in Hoodoo, there isn't all that harm none, animal loving, vegetarian nonsense that you find in Wicca. Wiccans really irritate me when they start in about three fold destiny and white magic, which was created by Gerald Gardner and has nothing to do with real witchcraft.
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