The following contains a transcript from a short radio broadcast that has been picked up by various listeners across the continental United States. Many have been perplexed by its sudden appearance and how it seems to preempt whatever song or radio program they are listening to at the time. It has even been known to appear on streaming programs such as podcasts or Spotify. Listeners have described hearing different episodes and there have been many situations and incidents.
A 23 year old college student named Yuvisela contacted me with her account of hearing the broadcast. She and her boyfriend had encountered the broadcast while driving one sultry summer afternoon from Austin, TX.
So I have this thing with waterfalls. I’m a little obsessed with them. In my free time and when I’m not paying attention in lecture, I like to look on the internet at pictures of them and daydream that I’m there: the roar of the splashing water, the white foamy spray, my bare toes dipped into the icy spring. I’ve got a Pinterest page with hundreds of falls that I would like to visit one day. Niagara, Havasu, Victoria Falls, Gullfoss, Iguazu; they’re all on there. I keep them all catalogued for my bucket list.
Yet, how many people go to the grave with their bucket list hardly finished? I bet a lot.
My boyfriend, Gabriel, likes to mess with me about my obsession. He’ll come up behind me while I’m on my computer or look over my shoulder at my phone and see that I’m looking at waterfalls.
“Don’t go chasing waterfalls, stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to,” he’ll sing when he catches me. It’s this old song he knows, TLC or something. He’s about six years older than me. I’ll joke with him to leave me alone and quit singing that old music, ask him if he used to listen to that on an 8-track or something.
“No, my older sister listened to it on CD. You know CD’s? Those little plastic things with the holes in them? That little slot in your car’s stereo, a CD goes in there. They don’t make ‘em in the new cars anymore.”
We’ve had a variation of this same conversation a bunch of times. It’s kind of a running joke between the two of us—him poking fun at my waterfall obsession and me making fun of how old he is—and while he thinks the waterfall thing is a cute little quirk of mine, he also has been supportive of my passion. That’s why he surprised me with the trip that summer. He knew that I was yearning to see some of these places. He knew that he wanted to make me happy. He knew that my resources were limited. He knew that we weren’t getting any younger; I was 23 and still had a semester to go.
But he also knew that we weren’t getting any richer, either. At least not anytime soon. I know I’m a little bit older for a college student, but it’s taken me a bit longer on account of having to work and stuff. I can’t take a full load every semester. Money’s always tight. I work full time and barely stay ahead, even sending some of my money to help my mom out. Gabriel offered to help me out some and we’d even talked about moving in together, but we had only been together a year at that point and I wasn’t quite ready.
Before my dad had passed, I’d promised him that I was going to get my college degree and I wanted to do it all on my own. While I loved Gabriel and could see myself marrying him, I didn’t want to deal with a transition like that so close to the finish line. Besides, we were getting along so well as it was. Why mess with a good thing?
And it was a good thing that kept better. Just when I thought that I couldn’t love Gabriel more, on my birthday he surprised me with the best present I’ve ever gotten. It was a little black notebook with this kind of leathery cover. While the notebook itself was nice, it was what was inside that was the true present. At some point, he had gone onto my Pinterest page and written down page after page of waterfalls, organizing them by country and state. He had put little squares beside them, boxes to check off. The last two pages were Texas and Oklahoma. He had written a note there. It read:

“Let’s start now...”
-Gabriel

* * *
So far, the trip had been a blast. We had started out in Abilene where we both lived and where I attended college. From there, we went to a place called Gorman Falls at this state park. It was one of the tallest waterfalls in the state and all of the foliage and moss around it was lush and green and for a while, if I crossed my eyes just right it was like I wasn’t even in Texas.
We couldn’t hit all the sites in a day. It was a road trip with multiple nights in hotels. After Gorman Falls and staying at a hotel, we headed towards Austin and stopped off at Hamilton Pool Preserve. The waterfall wasn’t as tall as Gorman, but I have to say I liked it better. The water formed a curtain as it poured off of a rocky shelf and into this sunken grotto of blue green water.
We stayed at this magical place for hours, swimming in the water and soaking up the sun. I could’ve stayed longer, but it was starting to get crowded, so we headed to Austin for a night on the town on 6th Street.
The next day we slept in and got a late start on the road. Lunch was at a Whataburger outside Waco. We sat and ate our food and looked at our phones. I browsed Instagram and my eyes skimmed over a gorgeous site. Yep, another waterfall. I slid my phone over to Gabriel.
“Look!” I said.
“Am I supposed to be looking at the butt or the waterfall?” he asked. An Instagram model was standing with her back to the camera, looking up at the water in awe.
“The waterfall, silly.”
“Seriously, that skinny white girl ain’t got nothing on you. Better let me take a look, just to be sure.”
I stood and twirled around quickly, teasing him. “Ok, so back to the waterfall. Did you look at it?”
“Yeah, it’s beautiful babe. Where was this one?”
“Iceland,” I sighed.
“Oh, right.”
“It’s not looking good for the time being. Maybe in a few years, yeah?”
“Just gotta see how the election goes. I ain’t holding my breath.”
See, neither of us were U.S. citizens. We were what you call DACA recipients. Both of us had wound up in America via illegal means on behalf of our parents, back when we were kids. This was when we were too young to have any say in the matter. I can hardly remember my life before, my life back in Mexico. I grew up here, went to school here. Texas and America is the only home I’ve ever known. Gabriel, he was originally from Guatemala. His situation is more or less the same.
If we were to leave the country, then we might risk not being able to get back in. You could apply for eligibility to travel if you had special circumstances, but they didn’t allow travel for leisure. We didn’t even have passports. Until then, our dreams of traveling—something we both wanted to do—were just that: dreams.
There was a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Obama and that DREAM act, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. You know, the dreamers or whatever? That’s what they call us. I guess they call it that because it’s just a freaking fantasy that disappears at the slightest thing—the sunrise, your phone alarm—out of your grasp as soon as you start your day.
Anyways, I applied for the DREAM act, but it hasn’t been a guarantee. We’re all stuck in a sort of limbo, waiting for the people in Washington to figure out what the hell to do with us, using us as a bargaining chip.
Not Gabriel though, he didn’t apply for the act. Part of it was that he was bad about procrastinating. The other part was that he was paranoid about signing up. I told him that he was an idiot and if he blew his chance to become a legal permanent resident, then I wouldn’t follow him to Guatemala if he got deported. He told me that he didn’t trust the program, that once they had you in the system they could track you easier, keep tabs on you. Said he knew a guy that got deported this way. I told him that the guy must’ve gotten into some legal trouble, a DUI or something, to have been deported.
“We’re all just one slip up from some legal trouble. Hell, some people consider us illegal right now,” he had said.
It was hard to argue against that, I guess. At least he knew where he stood, didn’t have that false hope. Sometimes I think it’s the hope that gets you, makes things worse.
Gabriel frowned and handed the phone back to me, looked out the window and took a sip of his Coke. I suddenly felt bad and ungrateful. Here was this amazing man that had planned out an awesome road trip just for me and I was busy looking at other far off adventures, not appreciating what I had right in front of me, the moment I was living in right now.
I leaned forward and kissed him. "I don't care where I'm at as long as you're with me," I said and he smiled.
What I told him just then, it was true. That didn’t mean I was going to grow complacent and quit dreaming.
They did call us dreamers after all.
It was one of those giant truck stops, the kind that was a little smaller than a Wal-Mart or Target, but just barely. We filled up and paced around inside and looked at the aisles and aisles of candy, the funny toys and souvenirs, and the tacky t-shirts.
“Hey Yuvi, whaddaya say? It’s your size.” Gabriel asked, holding up a black t-shirt with glittery letters. “PROUD TRUCKER WIFE” it read.
“Only if you get that one,” I said, pointing at a T-shirt with a semi-truck on it that read “I JUST DROPPED A LOAD”.
“Eww,” Gabriel said, laughing.
We both wandered around on our own. They had a huge candy section and I was looking to see if they had any vero elotes candy. I had just found a bag on a bottom shelf when Gabriel came skipping up.
“We are so getting this,” he said, holding up a plastic CD case.
“What is it?”
“Best of the ‘90s. It’s got your song on there, see? ‘Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls.’ Can we get it? It’s only 3.99.”
“Ha, ok. But only if you buy me this,” I said, handing him the candy.
There was traffic from hell just south of Denton on account of construction and a car wreck or two. We were stop-and-go for what seemed like an hour. I was passenger side and Gabriel idled along.
“Ok. I think now’s the time to break out this bad boy,” Gabriel said as he started tearing at the plastic wrap around the CD case.
“I think this is the first time I’ve even used the CD player in this car.”
“Aw hell yeah,” Gabriel said as the first song started playing. “Gettin’ Jiggy With It.”
“Getting what, now?”
“It’s your boy, Will Smith. Y’know the Fresh Prince? Betcha didn’t know he had a little music career.”
“That guy from I Am Legend and Aladdin?”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “I guess. His older work is much better.”
“Well I don’t know. You act like you're this old and wise millennial. You’re not that much older than me, y’know.”
“I’m telling ya, my Gen-X sister raised me on all of this stuff. I think she was Gen-X. I don’t know the damn cutoffs. Anyways, she babysat me a lot growing up while Mama was working and stuff. She cultured my little ass. Ooh, here it is!”
A new song started playing. I couldn’t help but laugh at how it started. “It sounds like porn music!”
“Nah, shhhh. Shhh.” Gabriel bobbed his head along to the beat.
The chorus started to worm it’s way into my head. The song was ok, I guess. I still can’t really listen to it to this day.
“You gotta listen to this dope rap coming up,” Gabriel said.
There was the sound of hissing and popping, wet logs burning in a fire. Whispers intermingled with the sound effects. One of the voices rose above the others and said “Listen!” harshly in Spanish, you know, “Escuchen! Escuchen!”, several times.
We both looked at each other with wide eyes. The traffic crept forward slowly and Gabriel kept his hands on the wheel and I kept mine in my lap and that’s when he started to talk. It was this happy sounding older guy, talking right there on my car’s speakers.
Gooood afternoon folks, Buck Hensley here with a special rush hour edition of “The Rules of the Road”. Hope ya’ll are doing alright out there while you’re idling on the clogged arteries of America’s highways and byways, breathing in those delicious exhaust fumes. I know that good ol’ Mother Earth likes to take a big fat rip of that stuff from time to time, although as of late she seems to be getting quite a contact high from that delicious Co2 and starting to feel the effects just a little too much.
And yet you all keep puff-puffing and passing, never slowing down. What with your jet planes and your driving and your travel and your neverending consumption and your cow farts and whatnot. All I’m saying is that you folks might wanna slow down a bit on that stuff, because I’ve seen the end results and all I can say is that they are hilarious. But I understand if you wanna keep on keeping on and having a good time. All I can say is smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.
Speaking of good times, that reminds me of today’s special “Rule of the Road”. You’re gonna want to listen to this one as it’s all about good times. Why that was Carla’s favorite sitcom for a spell there, “Good Times”. She’d watch reruns on into the night, the TV casting a pale glow that was kinda comforting across the bed, and I’d wake up to live studio laughter and her snoring softly beside me, the serene look of slumber on her face and the years I’d wasted.
Gabriel and I both looked at eachother. He shrugged and reached for the stereo. I shooed his hand away. I wanted to listen to it. The voice continued.
But I digress...well now, on to today’s “Rule of the Road”. If at any point during your journey you stop off for a pitstop or a potty break and you enter a public restroom to do your business, take note of the writing on the stalls. You might notice some graffiti that reads, “For a Good Time, Call” and then a phone number listed after it. If you do notice this, then take the number down for later use. Whenever you are in dire need of a good time, then give that number a call.
Now before you go off with a bee in your bonnet and tell me how you ain’t gonna call no sketchy phone number taken off a lady’s or men’s room wall, let me just tell you that this will be worth it. You can trust me. When has old Bucky ever let ya down?
I know what you’re gonna say next though, you’re gonna say, “Buck, I don’t ever call no numbers on my phone. I’m deathly afraid of voices on the other line. If I can’t text and send little emojis and the like, then forget it. If I can’t use an app to order Thai food or a pizza, then I go hungry that night. I haven’t even made an appointment to a doctor since I’ve lived with my parents. What if since we can’t see each other’s faces we start talking at the same time and we talk over each other and then say, ‘oops sorry, no you go ahead’ and then we both say it again at the same time and then we both start trying to talk again and then get stuck in some sort of infinite loop?”
And to that I say, “fair enough.” Don’t use the phone. The consequences of not following this rule are a little less dire than previous rules you may have heard. If you don’t follow this rule then you will simply miss out on a good time. That’s it. But you wouldn’t want to miss out on anything, would ya?
Welp. That’s all I’ve got on this fine late afternoon. May the wind be always at your back, your picnic basket full of snacks, and your cheese ever be pepper jack. Ya’ll stay sane out there. Stay symbiotic. Stay lonely. I'm Buck Hensley and these are "The Rules of the Road".
The voice instantly stopped and the song returned playing. Gabriel had a dumbfounded look on his face.
"What the hell?" he said and tried to rewind the CD.
"Umm, was that part of the song? Maybe a different version?"
"No way," he said and kept rewinding and playing the song over. The little skit that we heard never returned.
“Weird,” I said.
“Beats the heck out of me.”
“Maybe the CD is haunted. That was pretty spooky, y’know? That voice telling us to listen.”
“Maybe it was like a hidden track or something. They used to put those on CD’s back in the day. And this CD was pretty cheap and has all these songs on it. Could’ve been like a pirated deal.”
We weren’t really scared by the broadcast or whatever it was, just more confused. It was only looking back that we saw the importance of what we had heard and how from there our path seemed to be led a certain way.. At the time it was just this weird little thing, a funny little mystery that was forgettable for the time being.
We crept along for a while without incident, the traffic slowly gaining momentum. The music on the CD played on as usual and we heard no extra voices. The songs played like they were supposed to. Everything was fine.
Of course, outside of Gainesville, it hit me. I had been trying to ignore it and power through until we stopped for the night, but I had the sudden urge to pee. All that slow traffic and iced tea and a bottle of water must’ve caught up with me. This was intense. Usually I could hold it pretty good, but I had to get Gabriel to stop at the first exit we saw.
It was this gas station kind of off by itself and it was all dingy and old and faded and didn’t look the cleanest. Gabriel parked and my lower stomach and bladder ached as soon as I stood up and got out of the car. I burst into the place and made a beeline towards the restroom, over in the corner past the ATM and the glass fridges down a hall with burnt out fluorescent lights.
They were singles that you could lock, one for men and one for women. The floor was sticky and paper towels piled out of a trash can and a strip of toilet paper floated in a pool of standing water. A condom dispensing machine was on the wall opposite the toilet.
It wasn’t the worst public restroom I’d ever used and I didn’t have many options; I was literally about to piss myself. I would have to do the hover move over the toilet seat. No seat covers in a joint like this and I didn’t have time to prep it with toilet paper anything.
So I was doing my business, my thighs burning from the squat, and kind of laughing to myself at the condom dispenser machine with its brands like the “FRENCH TICKLER” and that’s when I saw it, the graffiti written in Sharpie, right there on the vending machine. It said, “For A Good Time, Call 9xx-XXX-XXXX [Redacted]”.
After I finished and had washed my hands, I snapped a pic of the graffiti. I figured Gabriel would get a kick out of it.
“You’re supposed to call it. That’s the rule,” Gabriel said when I showed him.
“I’m too nervous. You call. You heard it, too.”
“Chicken.”
“Yep.”
“How many of those things do you even see? I’ve seen them all the time. I bet it’s just dudes pranking each other or fucking with their ex-girlfriends.”
“Well I found it in the ladies room, so hopefully it wasn’t dudes.”
“Okay, you enter it in your phone and I’ll dial. I’ll try to do a caller ID block or something. Let’s just see what happens.”
“Are you sure?”
“Eh come on. Maybe it’s fate.”
The Texas travel center appeared on the southbound side of the interstate and we were soon crossing the Red River on into Oklahoma as I transcribed the numbers from the picture to the keypad on my dialer.
A large casino came into view. It was ginormous with this sort of facade of all these famous buildings on its outside. I could see Big Ben and that Roman coliseum and all these other world architecture things. The casino just stretched on and on.
“Aw, not again,” Gabriel said.
I had just finished transposing the number into the phone. The crazy casino had distracted me. “What is it, babe?”
“Another jam.”
The traffic was veering into the right hand lane, but it was still moving at a decent clip, like 45 mph or something. After a mile of this, I could see a couple of highway patrol cars parked across the interstate, blocking both lanes of traffic. A state trooper stood out in the middle, waving a flashlight thing and directing traffic to take the exit. There was still about an hour of daylight left and you couldn’t even see the light. He was just using it as a baton. Somewhere off in the distance there was a thick wall of smoke filling the evening sky with this surreal haze.
“Wonder what’s going on?” I asked.
“Who knows? Grassfire, maybe.”
We followed the other cars and trucks down the exit ramp. Some turned right, some turned left.
“Right or left? Right or left?” Gabriel asked.
There seemed to be more cars turning left. Maybe they knew something we didn’t. But then, we would be stuck behind them and it was getting dark and we were already behind schedule. I wanted to get the hell out of the car.
“Um, right! Right,” I said, trying to pull up the GPS on my phone. It was lagging and my service had kicked over to 3G. “Freaking Verizon,” I muttered.
We drove down a highway past empty fields fenced off by barbed wire. There were houses and barns and oilfield pump jacks every so often, but not much else. No gas stations or a sign of a town or much else, really. After driving into all this nothingness for a while, my phone completely lost all signal. The cars around us thinned out and there was only a black SUV in front of us.
“Hey babe, I have no service and can’t pull up the GPS. Wanna turn back around?”
“Nah, let’s just keep going. We’ve come this far, yeah? We’ll hit a main road eventually, get some service.”
I sighed in response as he kept driving, let him know I didn’t approve.
“We’ll turn north soon, ok? All roads lead to Turner Falls.”
I checked my phone every fifteen seconds, looking for a signal.
“C’mon Gabe, we’re gonna get lost out here. Let’s just go back, follow the other cars or see if they’ve opened up the interstate again.”
“Look, this looks like a good road. We’ll cut north here and drive aways and then cut back west towards the interstate. It’s literally impossible to get lost out here. Just trying not to lose any more time.”
But it wasn’t so simple and the nervous feeling in my stomach was validated when the road we drove north on turned to gravel. The sun was long gone and our headlights cut a tunnel through the night as barbed wire whizzed by, separating us from pastures that were elevated above the road on grassy rises. I started to fear the worst, thinking of every horror movie I’d ever seen that had started out this way: the headstrong man refusing to admit that he was lost and didn’t know where he was going and the increasingly pissed off and worried girl that was with him.
“Babe, please just turn around,” I pleaded.
“Ok, ok. Still no signal, eh?”
I looked down at my phone. Finally, there was one bar of service. “Yes! Hang on.”
“Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Gabriel said, his voice growing louder.
My stomach dropped as what appeared in the rear view mirror was just as scary as any sort of Freddy or Jason or Leatherface from the big screen.
Part 2

History of Clifton Hill Part 5 (Final): What Could Have Been, and What Can Still Be

Thank you to everyone who has followed this series or voted for it's creation. I'm glad you've enjoyed it and I'm always happy to spread the important history of the amusement industry, especially pertaining to the place that inspired me to go into the industry. For parts 1-4 scroll back in this sub or click my profile.
In 1989, Welland Securities, who owned the entire south-west side of the Hill, would develop the final portion of unused land on Clifton Hill. They would become HOCO (Harry Oakes Company) and gain ownership of almost all the attractions on land they leased out. This included Movieland, The Space Spiral Tower and the Cliffside Motel. The only attractions that would continue being leased were Ripley's and Circus World, meaning HOCO not only owned all the land on the South-West side of the hill, they now ran everything between Circus World and Ripley's, as well as the Fudge Factory (in its original spot) and an ice cream stand immediately down the hill from Circus World. They planned to keep everything that was on the hill but build on it.
Movieland was remodeled and the outside was given a more noticeable Egyptian theme to match the lobby. This meant large lion statues and Costello's talking pharaoh. The lobby was remodeled as well. Rather than a cameraman and a director filming Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, they would now be filming Costello's Indiana Jones figure, who lowered up and down on a rope above a fogging pit with a cobra rising out of it. Many of the early talkie-era stars in the hall immediately after the entrance (along with Elizabeth Taylor) were moved to 2 large display cases in the middle of the attraction with multiple figures, instead of each one having their own scene. In their original spot just inside the entrance an intentionally scary scene was created to match the popular Indiana Jones series. Many of the figures Costello had added since he became the museum's artist were slightly frightening, like a lunging alligator or a startling Joker scene with a machine gun sound effect. The museum had been expanded at the end, and a large horror section had been added, with many figures like the mummy being from the same mold as the House of Frankenstein/Castle Dracula mummys. Unlike when it would move to it's current location in 2005, the old location's chicken exit was placed before the horror section rather than the haunted house portion. In fact, there was no haunted house section, many of the figures that would end up in the haunted house section of the new location were simply scattered throughout the museum. Many of the figures in the horror section of the original museum were actually less scary and less animated than the Jurassic park scene or the alligator encountered earlier in the museum. To prevent unsuspecting parents who had no clue what kind of attraction this was dragging their children in and expecting static figures of washed-up movie stars, getting the living daylights scared out of them, then end ending up filing complaints with HOCO's customer service department, an intentionally scary scene was put at the beginning. This let people know what they were walking in to, an experience rather than a museum. Costello designed figures behind plexiglass such as a man upside down in a cocoon thrashing around, a skull that popped up from the floorboards in a scene full of snakes, a man on a bed of spikes that fell towards you, and a scene with spiders on fishing line "jumping" all over a rotting corpse.
The Cliffside Motel was amalgamated into a wing of the Quality Inn, and the driveway into it off the hill was removed as it was no longer necessary because it could be accessed from the Quality Inn parking lot. In the driveway's place was now a large empty space between Circus World and Movieland, with the Space Spiral Tower (with a relatively small footprint) stuck in the middle. HOCO called upon attraction design and layout firm White Hutchison Leisure Learning Group (WHLLG) to design an attraction around the Space Spiral that would use the final undeveloped land on Clifton Hill. And so WHLLG designed Dazzleland Family Fun Centre. Dazzleland was a courtyard of buildings arranged in roughly the same layout as the Great Canadian Midway (for reasons we'll get to later) that sits on the land now. The buildings around the outside of the courtyard were long and narrow, picture a courtyard of carnival game trailers but permanent, appealing buildings. These buildings included a Skee-ball building, a sports game building (basketball games, football toss etc.), a racing game building, a pinball building, a funnel cake shop, and the prize counter. In the back corner, roughly where the XD Theatre now is in the midway, was a larger building: an arcade housing video games and more pinball machines. In the middle of the courtyard was a small carousel, and a small building housing games that dispensed their own prizes (claw machines, prize egg games, etc.) and coin-op kiddie rides.
The Space Spiral was incorporated into Dazzleland, still being accessible directly off the hill. As mentioned in part 3, the tower was exactly where the Fudge Factory now is, as the circular store was once the loading area for the tower. At this time the snack bars beside the tower right on the hill were constructed: a pretzel/hotdog stand and an ice cream stand, both of which are still there. The Wendy's was built on top of Circus World, replacing the mini golf that had formerly been on the attraction's roof. Across the entrance to Dazzleland's courtyard from Wendy's was a Domino's Pizza, roughly where the photo booth just to your right is when entering the Great Canadian Midway now. Between the Space Spiral and the Dominos was a fortune teller machine built right into the wall: "Ask the Brain". The brain still lives on inside Movieland, except now he wants a loonie instead of a quarter. Just up the hill from the Space Spiral, on top of the hot dog and ice cream stand, a small sports bar was built. Very little is known about this sports bar, but obvious remnants of it still exists. The area of Boston Pizza closest to the hill (the back corner near the kitchen, the bar area, and the raised dining area) was the originally the sports bar. It featured a small coin-op bowling lane, arcade games, and food. The stairs in the Midway up to Boston Pizza beside Ghostblasters is the original stairs up from Dazzleland to the sports bar. Additionally, the Boston Pizza entrance closer to the hill (not the one with the big bowling pin, other one) was the main entrance to the sports bar. Little is known about the bar, including it's name. It may not have had one, simply being part of the Dazzleland complex. Many of the areas in Dazzleland didn't have a name, simply having signs heralding "Arcade", "Sports Games", "Skeeball" rather than naming the areas like the "Game Factory", "Sports Zone" or "Strike! Rock 'n Bowl" like in the Midway. For this reason, the bar may have been nameless, simply being part of the Dazzleland complex, but it's unlikely a dining establishment geared at adult nightlife wouldn't have a name.
Because the mini golf on Circus World's roof had been operated by the Cliffside Motel operators, HOCO acquired all the assets from it when they stopped leasing the land out. When the aforementioned Wendy's was built, the mini golf was moved just up the hill from the sports bar. It's entrance was right on the hill, but the course wrapped around the sports bar and ran back behind Dazzleland, between the back of Dazzleland and the parking lot of the Quality Inn. It would now be dinosaur themed and heavily landscaped. WHLLG designed the course and HOCO contracted Costello to build all the fiberglass dinosaurs. It's unknown what it's original name was, but in the early 90s, with the smash hit of Jurassic Park, it was renamed Dinosaur Park and given a similar logo. Up until the 2018 remodel, Boston Pizza had a patio. This patio was the exact location of the entrance to the mini golf, and the reason the restaurant's building curved in such a bizarre way surrounding the patio was originally to accommodate the course. Underneath the sports bar and mini golf and was an underground building accessible from a back corner of Dazzleland's courtyard. This area housed all of Dazzleland's miscellaneous ticket redemption games and 2 shooting galleries. The low-ceiling area of the Midway called the "Game Factory" is this original building. The Bonanaza Company shooting gallery is still there albeit heavily remodeled, but Blasteroids, an early project by arcade game company Lazer-Tron, was removed in 2016. Interestingly, the chase lights along the back wall of the Game Factory are Dazzleland holdovers. Between the shooting gallery and where what's left of the racing games now are is a bank of maintenance doors. If you get lucky and see them open, you'll see a stairs that was originally an entrance to Dazzleland from further up the street, beside Dinosaur Park. This now lets out somewhere in Boston Pizza's arcade (although I haven't been able to figure out where) and is used by staff to get from "a" to "b" faster.
Dazzleland has been the hardest to dig up information on in my research on Clifton Hill. Although I now know what was in each of the buildings around the outside of this "courtyard", I haven't been able to find which one was where. The only things I've confirmed is where the video game building was, what was in the building in the middle, and confirmed that the Game Factory was originally part of Dazzleland. The rest is beyond me and my memories of it have long faded. If anyone worked here or visited it frequently and has any answers, they would be greatly appreciated. Additionally there was a small pool near the front with a Costello dragon figure in it that spit water out it's mouth. I've heard conflicting reports that this was just a fountain, and others saying it was a small bumper boat or RC boat attraction, but my guess is it was just a fountain as it seems like a pretty small pool. The same year, fiberglass dragon waterslides were added to the Quality Inn pool. Although bearing striking resemblance to Costello's dinosaurs and Dazzleland dragon, at least one more of each of the dragon slides exist, all the way down in Texas. It was originally thought this Texas waterpark bought them off HOCO when Quality Inn closed, but one of the Quality Inn dragons appeared on an episode of shipping wars going to Kansas and the other was recently found abandoned on a private residential property in Niagara, proving they are in fact not the ones at the Texas waterpark. This is evidence they may have been mass produced.
By the time Dazzleland opened in 1989, it was the 8th arcade on the hill (after Circus World, Q-Balls Billiards Pub in Quality Inn, the arcade in Ripley's, the arcade in the Foxhead, the arcade in Castle Dracula, Funland in the basement of the House of Frankenstein, and an arcade that had recently opened in the Pilgrim Motel in their gift shop.) These were just the large-scale, dedicated arcades right on the hill. Many others could be found nearby in Maple Leaf Village, the Skylon, the Seagram, Pyramid Place and the Imperial Hotel as well as many mini golf courses and family fun centres along Lundy's Ln. and the QEW. Also, virtually every gift shop on Clifton Hill and Victoria Ave. had a game or 2.
The mix of arcades, haunted houses, fast food, nightlife and stores selling t-shirts and posters had started a well-known rock culture in Niagara Falls among Southern Ontario youth. The epicenter of this was "Rock World", a rock-themed gift shop that had opened in 1983 on Centre St. (the street Clifton Hill becomes just above Victoria Ave.) They would later add a second story and build Rock Legends Wax Museum above it, with all the figures sculpted by the store's owner Pasquale Rammuno. In 1996, Maple Leaf Village was replaced by Casino Niagara, and many of the attractions found new homes on Victoria Ave., including Screamers and Nightmares. The Elvis Museum, Antique Auto Museum, 50s diner nightclub, and arcade all moved to Pyramid Place adjacent to the IMAX pyramid. Screamers prospered on Victoria Ave., and 2 "sequel attractions" were built in the early 2000s: Creatures of the Night on Victoria Ave. and Horror Manothe Zombie Zoo Nightclub on Centre St. Another attraction, Alien Encounter, would open at the corner of Victoria Ave. and Clifton Hill beside the Criminals Hall of Fame. This slightly thematically darker "north of the hill" area with the Screamers chain, the Criminals Hall of Fame, Rock Legends, Nightmares and Alien Encounter became a "main strip" all in it's own.
As mentioned before, since the cabin courts were all town down in the early 50s, nothing had been torn down on Clifton Hill. The only exception was the Houdini Hall of Fame that burnt to ash in 1996. Some of Houdini's Last Words were claiming that anything revealing his secrets would perish in flame, and even though the fire completely leveled the museum, the plywood and fiberglass paneled House of Frankenstein only separated from it by a 2-foot wide alley was completely untouched, leading a lot of Houdini's fans to believe he was conducting some kind of post-mortem practical joke. The metal objects like handcuffs and the water tank could be saved, and were bought by David Copperfield. Ripley's Moving Theatre was built in it's place. Over the 30 years from Tussaud's opening in 1959 to Dazzleland in 1989, Clifton Hill had expanded and filled up the land. However that didn't mean it was time to tear things down. Things were simply moved around or remodeled to keep them fresh, not out of an unwillingness to change, but because these things had become ingrained in the landscape. Examples of this were Tussaud's moving to its current home in the old building of a restaurant that had since moved on Victoria Ave., rather than the attraction shutting down, or the Adventure Dome Theatre oepneing in part of the Honeymoon City's gift shop. In Tussaud's old place was built the MGM walkthrough/store, Pink Panther ride and 4D Ride in 2002. The beer garden beside it was replaced with the WWE building and the Piledriver ride, but the beer area was moved to between the 2 attractions. In 2004 the Foxhead's arcade was expanded and re-themed into the Marvel Superheros Adventure City.
Another great example of re-freshing an existing attraction was Dazzleland. A simple realization was made, more games = more money and higher guest enjoyment. The outdoor courtyard style with it's room for walkways between the buildings was re-designed, and HOCO again called upon WHLLG. WHLLG designed not only a remodel of Dazzleland, but an incredible 5-step plan that would have made Clifton Hill financially on par with a major theme park. Steps 1-3 came to fruition. Step 1 was remodeling Dazzleland into the Great Canadian Midway in 2002. The level, concrete foundation Dazzleland was built on was kept as the foundation of the Midway, hence why it has the same layout. The former video game building at the back became the FX Ride Theatre (now XD Theatre/Wild West Coaster) in the Midway. The funnel cake shop was kept where it was in Dazzleland except now it was in the Midway, between the FX Ride and the Prize Counter. The area housing Dazzleland's ticket redemption games became the Game Factory. The middle building housing the claw games and kiddie rides was demolished, as it was no longer needed because the Midway was fully indoors and there was now a massive space to put games. The sports bar was expanded and became Boston Pizza, so Dinosaur Park was moved to in front of the Comfort Inn. Under the expanded Boston Pizza, Sally Corp. was hired to build the interactive Ghostblasters dark ride. All of Dazzleland's old games made the transition into the Midway, however very few are still around.
With the Midway making serious buck, HOCO went ahead with phase 2 of WHLLG's plan. Movieland was moved to Circus World's former location in 2005, and Circus World's owners moved the attraction to what was then the popular Victoria Ave. area. In Movieland's old home, Cosmic Golf, a blacklight golf was temporarily set up. 2 years later in 2007, the golf moved to it's permanent home in the basement becoming Galaxy Golf and the gift shop that had been formerly in the basement was moved upstairs. Movieland retained all the figures and sets they had at the time of the move, moving them all into the new space. All the scary elements were put in the new "House of Horrors", a small optional haunted house at the end of the attraction.
Phase 3 involved beginning to demolish the only thing that WHLLG's 5 phase plan would have torn down: Quality Inn. In it's place an amusement park would have been built, anchored by Canada's largest ferris wheel. The wheel would be phase 3 and the amusement park phase 4. Though both WHLLG and HOCO recognized the historical value of the hotel, it had reasons to go. The hotel may have been full of your usual hazardous mid-century building materials (however Comfort Inn built by the same firm the same year was found to have no hazardous materials when it was torn down in 2015, so who knows) but the main issue was elevators and the amount of space it took up. Comfort Inn only had 2 wings, one on each side of the lobby, and only 2 elevators would have needed to be installed. This wasn't legally necessary, as no law states that buildings of age absolutely have to be 100% accessible, it was more something HOCO wanted to do. Quality Inn had multiple wings that weren't accessible from one another, so an elevator would need to be installed in each wing. In addition to the elevator issue, Comfort Inn was chosen as the hotel to keep because the building was integrated with Kelsey's, Rumors Nightclub, Ripley's, and Dinosaur Park, all of which wouldn't have been touched in WHLLG's 5 phase plan. Finally, Comfort Inn's land wasn't big enough for an amusement park whereas Quality Inn's was. 2 things would justify the demolition of Quality Inn. One, it's sister hotel, Comfort Inn, would have been kept. The other reason justifying the demolition would be phase 5: a skyscraper hotel and indoooutdoor waterpark in the field between Clifton Hill and the Skylon Tower. The dragon figures from Quality Inn's pool were kept in HOCO's storage for a time for this waterpark. The final vision can be seen here.
Phase 3 would go ahead in 2006, with the lobby, Golden Griddle and Q-Balls Billiard pub of Quality Inn being torn down and the Skywheel built in it's place. For the last year Quality Inn was open, you would need to register at Comfort Inn's lobby. The same year, the Space Spiral was torn down, as 2 observation attractions wouldn't be needed on the hill. However, a new spiral tower would have been constructed during phase 4 in the theme park. The reason the tower would be demolished rather than moved was because a tower manufactured by the same company in Wildwood, NJ, had begun to sway a few years earlier, resulting in it needing to be removed entirely for safety reasons. Phase 4 was set to go ahead in 2010, so in 2009 the remainder of Quality Inn was demolished. It seemed as though everything would fall into place, and with the exception of Quality Inn making it's sacrifice, everything on Clifton Hill that had been there for 20-60 years would be there forever, just greatly expanded on.
Unfortunately, this came at a turning point for Clifton Hill, when the recession was in full swing and tourism had declined since 9/11. Changing technology and interests, but no real nostalgia trend yet, created a perfect storm, and the idea was scrapped. Especially now that there would be no amusement park, a lot of area attractions closed. HOCO now needed to find a new design company to completely re-design the project. The problem was, Quality Inn was already torn down to make way for the amusement park. HOCO reluctantly found a new design company who had no projects under their belt yet, IDS. HOCO was hopeful the Canadian company could help give them a similar vision to their previous 5 stage plan, that would help them re-use many of the already implemented stages and despite scrapping the amusement park, would simply scale down and redesign the hotel. This was done in hopes that the city would be much more likely to approve just another high rise hotel than an amusement park as well. IDS' new plan was much different than what HOCO was looking for. It featured tearing down Ripley's, Comfort Inn, Kelsey's, and Rumours Nightclub and building a Titanic Museum shaped like the boat. It also featured building a large mall within the hotel rather than a waterpark and relocating and expanding Dinosaur Park into Dinosaur Adventure Golf on Quality Inn's old land. While HOCO thankfully chose not to go ahead with the mall and Titanic Museum, they would build Dinosaur Adventure Golf and work with IDS to make a more feasible plan that better suited Clifton Hill.
The new plan featured Dinosaur Adventure Golf and Strike! Rock 'n Bowl as phase 1. It also included removing a lot of the thematic brand identity elements WHLLG had implemented to coincide with their final amusement park vision and replacing Galaxy Golf with Wizard's Golf as phase 2. Phase 3 would feature tearing down Comfort Inn (that never got it's elevators due to it no longer being planned to be kept), building Niagara Speedway in it's place, and removing Rumors Nightclub to accommodate the new Kelsey's bathrooms and Zombie Attack. Phase 4 would feature remodelling Wendy's, Boston Pizza and Kelsey's. Phase 5 would feature a mall (no hotel) in the field between Dinosaur Adventure Golf and the Skylon, but this final phase will likely never come to fruition.
Multiple attractions have closed since the late 2000's, such as the entire Screamers chain, Circus World, The Criminals Hall of Fame, Funland Arcade and Alien Encounter. The Hilltop Motel became the current home of the Upside Down House, and the Pilgrim Motel became Captain Jack's. Ironically, the only part of the building that's not part of the entertainment centre is a Mini Mart at the back that was the original arcade in the Pilgrim. Virtually everything in the Falls. Ave. complex other than Rainforest Cafe and the 4D theatre is gone. Marvel Superheroes Adventure City lost its license after Disney bought Marvel, and it simply became Adventure City. The Hulk Mini Golf became jungle themed, Spider-Man references were (poorly) removed from the dark ride, and X-men referenced were (also poorly) removed from the bumper cars. References to Marvel can still be found in the arcade, such as Spider-Man's face on a tree that was only covered up a few years ago. The WWE Store, after being abandoned since 2012, was turned into the Niagara Brewery Beer Store in 2016, fitting considering the land's history as a beer garden. Planet Hollywood on Falls Ave. closed around 2014, and is still abandoned. The MGM walkthrough was abandoned for over 10 years before becoming a barbecue restaurant in 2019.
The changes in the Falls Ave. complex are an example of good change, replacing abandoned attractions with ones that if anything are closer to what used to be there, such as Adventure City becoming an unthemed arcade again or the Beer Store being where the Beer Garden once was. Another example of this good change would be the long abandoned (and burnt) Adventure Dome that had briefly held a Lego attraction being turned into the Amazing Big Top Mirror and Lazer Maze in 2017. However a perfect example of negative change is the Rock Legends Wax Museum being forced out of business because a YouTube video of the museum was flagged for copyrighted music by YouTube's algorithms. This lead Sony Music to investigate the museum and shut it down last year if it wouldn't pay ridiculous licensing fees, which it couldn't afford.
Another example is IDS' redevelopment plan. HOCO is now locked in a contract with them, even though they obviously have very different ideas on the direction of Clifton Hill. Phase 1 was implemented in 2011, with Boston Pizza expanding their arcade to include Strike! Rock 'n Bowl and Dinosaur Park moving to where Quality Inn was and being renamed Dinosaur Adventure Golf. All of Costello's original dinosaurs (with the exception of the original Pterodactyl) would "migrate" to the new location where they would be joined by dozens of new mass-produced dinosaurs. Interestingly, foundations were built back in 2011 for the original 2 Brontosaurs to appear as if they were coming out of the ponds, but they wouldn't show up until 2019 when they were brought back out of storage to be installed, only to lay on the ground for a few months before going back into storage. Although it didn't use new hand-made figures, this attraction was a change that fits the spirit of Clifton Hill and was a good replacement for the empty plot of land that had once housed Quality Inn, even if an amusement park would have been better. The same cannot be said about the rest of IDS' plan. Many thematic elements installed throughout the hill by WHLLG (especially in Movieland and the Midway) were removed in phase 2 in 2013 simply to fit with IDS's image better, costing HOCO a lot of money. Phase 3 went ahead in 2015, and the 60 year old Comfort Inn was demolished, along with the old HOCO offices in it that if you remember from part 1, was the original nearly 200 year old stable building for the Zimmerman estate. Niagara Speedway was built in it's place, and if you look at the prices to drive it, then watch how many people do, you realize just how much they're making off it. Rumors Nightclub, originally the Queen's Door Nightclub in 1956, was gutted and turned into Zombie Attack and the new Kelsey's bathrooms, as the old ones had been in the Comfort Inn building. Phase 4 in 2018 extensively remodeled Wendy's as well as Boston Pizza, removing the patio.
Ghostblasters is now the final untouched WHLLG era attraction on the land. This is made even more troubling by the fact the signs for it were just removed and replaced with temporary ones, as I said in the post that started the entire discussion on whether or not I should do this series. If the attraction does go, we can only hope that a new interactive dark ride utilizing artistry, dimensional scenes and props much like Ghostblasters does is built, however that likely won't be the case. Triotech is the lead designer of ride through shooting games, that feature a dark ride car that travels through a hallway with screens on each side of it rather than real props. Triotech has dealt with HOCO before, building both the Wild West Coaster and Zombie Attack, so all signs point to one of these attractions replacing Ghostblasters if it closes.
There is still hope that Clifton Hill can retain it's spirit, but it stands at a crossroads. The House of Frankenstein for example, while retaining many original scenes, has had many removed and replaced with nothing, and many areas of the museum taken out entirely. Castle Dracula on the other hand hasn't updated a thing, but hasn't cared for the original scenes either, leaving them to fall into disrepair and only having 7 or 8 of the original 70 still lit, and none of them still functional. There are 2 directions Clifton Hill can go. With many attractions like the ones on HOCO's side being demolished to make way for whatever is trendy and lucrative, and many hanging on by a thread like Castle Dracula or Ghostblasters, the Hill is in real danger of becoming an endlessly overturning and developing area. However, with money recently being poured back into attractions like the Haunted House, Ripley's, and Guinness and attractions being redeveloped like the Falls Ave. complex or the Big Top Mirror maze, there is hope. If people, including the companies that own them, can recognise the historical value of attractions like Castle Dracula, The House of Frankenstien, Movieland, Tussaud's, etc., this can be promoted and the recent nostalgia boom can create large profits if this is played up. Additionally, future developments can still be more in the vein of what WHLLG envisioned for Clifton Hill, or what the Burlands recently did with the well done Big Top Mirror Maze. This is both profitable and economically sensible, as repeat customers that make memories and come to the area for generations with occasional new updates/re-themings (like what Clifton Hill did from the 50s-2010s), is far more profitable than a constantly turning over wave of new developments that cost millions to build that changes with each generation.
Thank you to everyone who has followed this series. Sorry for the length of this, but I promised this would be the last installment, so it has to be longer. If you have any information pertaining to Dazzleland or anything you know that I didn't cover in this series, let me know. Additionally, if you would like me to dig up photos on anything that I mentioned in the series, let me know, as unless it's the Dazzleland dragon, I probably have a photo of it. I will likely post many of them here anyway in time. Thanks again.

Total Drama World Tour: Staring Generation Three!

Yesterday, I made a post about the Revenge cast in Action, so now it’s time for the Pahkitew cast in World Tour, with Sierra and Alejandro joining them. To get one thing out of the way, Sierra and Alejandro are here because without them, the cast would be to small. Also, they joined as newbies in World Tour, and here, everyone is a newbie, so Sierra and Alejandro are gen 3 in this universe. Anyway, let’s get started.
Episode 1: Chris introduces the new cast, and also the new gimmick, singing. Reactions were mixed about this, Sierra, Topher and Ella thought it was a great idea, Jasmine, Dave, and Max were just annoyed, and others were just indifferent. The first challenge was located in Egypt, where they could choose to climb over, or go through a Pyramid. Nobody quits because there isn’t enough people. At the end, Chris announced that there were three teams this season, and he was to lazy to make names, so the contestants had to do it. The teams were dubbed...
The Dastardly Evil Masterminds: Shawn, Topher, Max, Jasmine, Sky, and Scarlett.
The Marvelous Magicians: Dave, Leonard, Beardo, Alejandro, and Sierra.
The Midwestern Actresses: Sugar, Amy, Sammy, Ella, and Rodney.
Song: Come Fly With Us
Episode 2: The episode began after the teams were formed, they each got prizes for a camel race. The Actresses won a camel, the Magicians won a goat, and the Masterminds were stuck with a stick. Suddenly, they all had to run away from a swarm of bugs, and make it to the Nile River while doing it. The teams had to weave a basket big enough to support the weight of the team members, and their prize. Sierra was really good with a weave, while the masterminds, having a lot of smart people, were good too. The Actresses were a lost cause, having there boat being completely awful, but thankfully for them.
17th, Max: He has a new invention that could turn animals evil. He used it on a Crocodile, thinking it would attack the other team, but it went crazy, destroying all the boats, and the Masterminds were the team that came last. He was shocked to be voted off, and clinger onto the plane when he was tossed out, and climbed into the cargo hold.
Song: Running Time
Episode 3: Chris said the next challenge would be in Japan, Scarlett started complaining that the outfit was actually Chinese, so chef cut the door open, which we sucked all the teams out the door, falling to the ground. Luckily, they landed in a big bowl of rice, and Alejandro complimented on her smarts, but she didn’t fall for his charms. The challenge was to make a commercial for Chef’s new food. Scarlett has a basic understanding of commercials, and Topher was a good actor, it came as a shock to nobody when they won first class. Leonard was annoying Dave with his LARPing, and Alejandro took this as an opportunity to mess with him. He told Leonard that his skills with leading parties and such could make him a great team leader, he accepted this challenge, and took it upon himself to lead the team. He did horribly, and the Magicians were going to lose, until...
16th, Sugar: A certain redhead stole the footage for the Actresses commercial, and corrupted it, they had the worst commercial, and Amy blamed the loss on Sugar. Leonard was celebrating the victory, but Dave intimidated him, saying that if it wasn’t for the corruption, he would be gone, and he should quit LARPing.
Song: Before We Die
Episode 4: The Juno Jet landed in the freezing winters of the Yukon, teams had to jump across ice flows to pull a sled to victory. Jasmine pulled the sled for the Masterminds, Dave also tries attracting Sky, which she’s flattered by. Beardo also becomes more social, and Ella and Sammy form a friendship. Leonard has to pull his sled, and didn’t try to use magic, he still came last, but the Actresses are missing a member.
15th, Rodney: His tongue was stuck to a pole, and the Actresses couldn’t find him. He tried to say he was tricked, but was pushed out. Scarlett stood behind a pillar smirking, revealing that she was the one who did this.
Song: Country Love
Episode 5: The challenge took place in New York, they had to climb the Statue of Liberty to get a baby carriage, Amy was excited to sing in New York, but Ella was a bit more focused on her bullying. Alejandro also started playing Sierra, telling her to talk about embarrassing things Chris did, which got him mad. Topher also lost a bit of respect he had for him. The challenge was also the first reward challenge, and nobody was sent home.
Song: What’s Not To Love?
Episode 6: The first aftermath. Like last time, the couples of last season were the host every episode. This episode was with Lightning and Anne Maria as hosts, both being stupid, they weren’t very good. Also, there was a new segment called total Drama fugitives, where an eliminated contestants was missing, that contestant being Max.
Peanut Gallery: Whiskers, Keith, Jose, Chef (Topher’s cat)
Interviews: Sugar, and Rodney.
Song: Cap-try Style
Episode 7: Contestants were dropped into a massive pile of snow, where they had to be quiet and sing. Alejandro started telling Amy to “Seize the day” which she knew exactly what that meant. Scarlett took notice of this. The seconded part of the challenge was to shove meat into a meat grinder, which disgusted Dave. Speaking of Dave, him and Beardo has become good friends at this point, though he still hated Leonard, even though he was becoming a somewhat normal person. The final part of the challenge was a German Slap-off, which Jasmine dominated in, being much stronger than everyone else.
Xth, Amy: Scarlett started taunting her on the platform, which she go annoyed by, and threw her and herself off the platform. She beat her up so bad she nocked a tooth out. She cost the team the challenge, and Sammy and Ella celebrated having such a menace gone. Alejandro started talking to Scarlett about what she did, but she said she knows that he’s evil.
Song: German Slap-off!
Episode 8: The teams were dropped off at the Amazon, and Chris said that he had a special announcement. The Actresses were going to merge with the other teams, Sammy was going on the Masterminds, while Ella was going to the Magicians. Jasmine started leading the team around the jungle, and was impressed when Shawn knew a lot about forests, forming a quick friendship. Leonard tried to lead the team, but ended up getting them captured by the Zing Zings. Luckily, Beardo managed to scare them off with his sound effects, but they were at a massive disadvantage. The Masterminds won, and Leonard was going to be voted off, but it was announced to be a reward challenge.
Song: It’s All Your Fault!
Episode 9: Paris, the place of art, and love. Leonard was upset that Dave was so mean to him, and Beardo wanted him to apologize. Alejandro defended him though, saying he could think what he wants, if he was going to dig his own grave, so be it. Sammy and Topher started to fall for each other, and Shawn started falling for Jasmine after realizing how wicked cool she was. The Masterminds found there prices really fast, and to ensure such a victory...
14th, Leonard: Scarlett pushes down the Magician’s statue and blamed it on Leonard, he tried to defend himself, but Dave has already made up his mind, and was glad to be gone of such an annoyance.
Song: Oui, My Friends
Episode 10: Why did they land in the middle of the ocean? To have the next challenge of course! Contestants had to race boats to the eastern shore. Alejandro and Scarlett rivalry was starting to get really high, and Alejandro was trying to play Ella, while Dave was trying to impress Sky, and Beardo was encouraging him. The seconded part was a challenge where they had to do very odd tasks. The last part was kissing a cod. Beardo told Dave to imagine he was kissing Sky, and he forgot all about how gross it was, while Shawn did the same thing, but for Jasmine. Jasmine has also taken notice off Sammy’s crush on Topher, and was trying to get them together. In honor of Chris being in his homeland, he made it a reward challenge, and nobody was sent home.
Song: Sea Shanty
Episode 11: The Jumbo Jet has crashed in the deserts of Jamaica, and one contestant had been very injured. The show had to go on though, and a challenge had begun. Contestants had to dive off a cliff into waters filled with sharks. Alejandro ended up grabbing the gold, but Scarlett stole it. The seconded part was to skateboard through a very dangerous obstacle course. The Masterminds has more physically dominate players, but the Magicians just edged it out.
13th/12th, Dave and Sky: Dave was the contestant injured by the Jumbo Jet, and had to be removed from the game. Sky and Beardo were very upset about this, but Alejandro worked his Magic to get Sky distracted, and lose the challenge.
Song: Watch The Fang!
Episode 12: The seconded aftermath. Despite not being a couple, Brick and Jo were instructed by the network to host the aftermath, as their fighting would real in money. Why did they need money? To repair the Jumbo Jet, the aftermath hosted a telethon to gain funds for the season again. There was many things going on, like Sky, Dave and Keith Drama, why Leonard LARPs, Amy joining the fugitives party, and how Jo singing in a dress in hilarious.
Song: Save This Show
Interviews: Leonard, Sky, and Dave.
Episode 13: Alejandro suddenly went missing, which Chris pretended didn’t happen. The teams were dropped off in London, and had to an advanced version of the psycho killer challenge. The teams had to solve riddles to find out were Jack the Ripper was hiding, while the Ripper was hunting them down. Jasmine and Shawn formed an amazing team together, while Beardo, Ella, and Sierra were becoming the next team E-scope. In the end, Jasmine and Shawn caught the real killer, while diet team E-scope caught a fraud. That fraud was actually Amy, which the others were shocked by, sense she was here, Chris said she could rejoin the game in staid if Max. When questioned about Max, Chris reveled who the Ripper really was, a feral Max, who had turned green and was losing hair. He was tossed back out, but he clung onto the wing again.
11th, Sammy: Scarlett told Amy that she was going to be voted out. Amy started panicking and begged her for a solution, Scarlett said she would give one as long as she joined in on her alliance. She agreed, and Scarlett suggested a switch. She disguised herself as Sammy, and Sammy tried to warn them, but was pushed out before she could say anything.
Song: Strip Them Down
Episode 14: The teens were going to compete in some Olympic event, and they almost landed in the wrong place, but was fixed thanks to Scarlett, Jasmine, and Alejandro. It came down to the tiebreaker, and Alejandro noticed something odd with Shawn, and riled him to tell everyone what he knows. He said that he saw Topher and Amy kiss, and apparently, Topher has no idea Sammy was gone, but Jasmine was too made to listen, and told Topher that she was going to beat him like a kangaroo. At the elimination ceremony, Topher was going to be eliminated, but Chris didn’t want to eliminate him with all the drama going on, so he got to play another day.
Song: Greek Trickery
Episode 15: In one of the most dangerous challenges yet, the teens had to raid area51, and steal an alien artifact. Jasmine started comforting Shawn when he started freaking out about conspiracy theories, and Topher tried his hardest to win, knowing he was going to be eliminated. Ella’s singing and Beardo’s beatboxing were enough to distract the aliens, however...
10th, Sierra: She stepped on a mine while running with the artifact, and it gets destroyed. Alejandro suggests voting her off to put her out of her misery, and Beardo and Ella don’t want to do it, but they had to.
Song: Cheating Boyfriend
Episode 16: Jasmine was excited to visit her home town Australia. Shawn took it upon himself to try impressing her about being good with the challenge. While the other team was good with animals, Jasmine absolutely crushed them, and they had to send someone packing.
9th, Beardo: Scarlett thew a dingo at him, which made him dizzy. When it came to voting, Ella voted for Alejandro, Alejandro votes for Beardo, and Beardo was so dizzy he accidentally voted for himself.
Song: Native Rock
Episode 17: The third ice challenge of the season. The two teams had to build a boat, and battle Viking style, the first ship to sink would lose. Topher was starting to get more saddened by Sammy leaving, while Shawn, a sort-of-friend of Topher’s, tried helping him out. In the end, The Magicians finally won a challenge, with Alejandro carrying them, as Ella was completely against violence. It was completely pointless anyway, as it was a reward challenge, and many have speculated that the challenge was just filler.
Song: We Built Sam’s Face
Episode 18: One of the most important aftermaths. Mike and Zoey hosted this time, and they put on a game show in which an eliminated contestant, or member of the Peanut Gallery would join the game.
Song: His Real Name Isn’t Beardo
Winner: Jose
Interviews: Sammy, Sierra, and Beardo.
Episode 19: The contestants were woken up falling into Niagara Falls, they had to rapidly save themselves. Topher got the adrenaline to save them after Amy said that if they lived, she would admit that Samey is better than her. Chris took the survivors to a casino, Amy was excited to gamble, but was disappointed to find themselves on a show stage. Chris announced that a new contestant would be joining the game, and Alejandro paled when he found out it was his brother Jose. Everyone was charmed by his looks, even the guys. Chris then said that they were gonna have some arranged marriages, and the guys were put into a slot machine, and the girls would have to gamble to see who they would get. The pairs were: Shawn and Jasmine, Alejandro and Scarlett, Topher and Amy, and Jose and Ella. The grooms had to guide their wives threw an optical course to get a dress, everyone succeeded. The grooms then had to carry their wife across a tight rope to get to America. Alejandro took the time to confront Scarlett about the eliminations she caused, while Scarlett counters with the eliminations he caused, they end up fighting, and falling off. Jose also stole Ella’s heart. While Topher and Amy fought a lot. In the end, Shawn and Jasmine has the most chemistry, and won. Shawn also asked Jasmine out, and she accepted, they were now a couple.
Winners: Shawn and Jasmine
8th, Amy: Topher pretty much begged the others to help him vote out Amy, being a jerk, they accepted to voting her out. She gave a warning about Scarlett before leaving though.
Song: Spainerific
Episode 20: Scarlett knew she was in trouble, so Alejandro tried to form an alliance with him. She refused, saying she could do things on her own. Jose has started to blackmail Alejandro though, and made him help with the challenge. However, they both failed in the eating challenge, and even though her stomach wasn’t that good, Scarlett managed to beat Shawn in the eating challenge.
Winner: Scarlett
7th/6th, Jose and Ella: Alejandro ended up being the one to crawl to Scarlett, and asked her to help him vote out Jose, Scarlett agreed, as long as he was her slave for the rest of the game. Shawn votes for Jose because he was getting jealous of him attracting Jasmine, Jasmine, Topher, and Jose voted for Ella do to being annoying, and Ella voted for Jasmine because Jose told her to. The producers were breathing down Chris’s neck, so he kicked them both out of the plane to save costs.
Song: Chinese Lesson
Episode 21: The contestants were taken to the scorching hot deserts of Africa, were they had to hunt down a completely Feral Max. Scarlett has Alejandro helping her, but her stood up for himself and cursed at her in Spanish. Shawn and Jasmine excelled in this challenge, but Shawn let her have the win. After everything he went through, Max still didn’t learn, and crawled back onto the plane.
Winner: Jasmine
5th, Topher: Scarlett talked to Shawn and Jasmine, and told them that Topher had to go, saying that him and Alejandro would team up and take them down if she was gone, they didn’t want to vote out there friend, but Scarlett’s words were just to convincing. Jasmine later beat herself up over it for falling for her schemes.
Song: Wake Up
Episode 22: The not really campers were dropped off at Easter Island, and had to do an egg hunt. There were statues of the eliminated contestants around, and when Alejandro questioned it, Chris pretty much told him to shut up. When everyone had gathered their eggs, they had to deliver it back to the mother Condor. Shawn won because it was as easy as climbing trees.
Winner: Shawn
Song: Condor
Episode 23: The final four landed in drumheller, they had to find bones to make a dinosaur. In the end, Shawn’s weird poop Dino won. Later, they had to retrieve buried cans of oil. Again, Shawn won, and Scarlett and Alejandro teamed up to take out Jasmine.
Winner: Shawn
4th, Shawn: Scarlett was going to be eliminated, but Shawn stopped the ceremony with a cake to celebrate him and Jasmine’s one weak anniversary. Unfortunately for him, they candles created a bunch of sparks, and fell into the oil puddle below him. It caused an explosion, which blew up the Jumbo Jet, in a fit of rage, Chris disqualified him from the game.
Song: This Is How We Will End It
Episode 24: The final aftermath. This time, it was set in a different location, Hawaii. Sam and Dakota were the hosts, and had a competition to see who would get an advantage in the finale. Sammy was representing for Jasmine, Jose for Alejandro, and Amy for Scarlett. In the end, Jasmine won a baby carriage, Alejondro won a wealbaroal, Scarlett got squat.
Interviews: Amy, Ella, Jose, and Topher.
Songs: Who Ya Gonna Root For?, and Hawaiian style.
Episode 25: The episode opened up with the aftermath of the explosion. Chris declares that the next challenge was immediately starting. Scarlett came at Alejandro, saying he was a traitor for voting her off, but Alejandro didn’t care. Shawn helped Jasmine get to the finish, and Scarlett created a monster from the remains of the Jumbo Jet. At the end, Alejandro won a spot in the finale, but Jasmine and Scarlett tied.
Winner: Alejandro
Song: I’m Gonna Make It
Episode 26: The episode was live, and Alejandro got to pick the tiebreaker, on who got to be with him. The challenge was a duel, and Jasmine was confident in her win, but Scarlett went crazy, and threw Jasmine into the water, getting her into the final challenge.
3rd, Jasmine: She lost the tiebreaker.
The two finalists got helpers to preform the challenge, Scarlett chose Amy and Jose, while Alejandro chose Shawn and Jasmine. The two races up the volcano, and Alejandro was going to win, when Scarlett started playing dumb. She said she liked him, but actually kicked him in the kiwis, and sent him flying down the mountain. She said that she never liked him anyway, and that he was an idiot for believing the facade. Before a prize could be given to the winner, Max came up from behind, stole the case, and fell into the volcano. It erupted, and the teens had to run for their lives, and Chris ended off the season.
Winner: You chose.
Song: Versus
Anyway, you may have noticed that some of this was similar to World Tour, but the Pahkitew cast doesn’t have much depth to them, shocker, I know. If there is anything you would change, please let me know, as any advice if greatly appreciated, and whose ending do you prefer?

History of Clifton Hill Part 2: Boom Years

Thank you to everyone who read and commented on part 1, your feedback is much appreciated. If you haven't read part 1 or want to see the original poll that brought me here, scroll back in this sub or (if you're reading this in the future and it's long since buried) click on my profile and find them there in my posts.
By the 50s, it had become clear that using Clifton Hill as a series of budget, away from the falls tourist camps wasn't nearly as lucrative as the land could potentially be. Welland Securities opened the Quality Inn Fallsway where Dinosaur Adventure Golf now sits and the Park Motor Inn (later Venture then Comfort Inn) where Niagara Speedway now is. Clifton Touring Camp was torn down to make way for these, save for the snack bar where Wizard's Golf now is that was an original Zimmerman estate gate house. The guest house building and gardens of the estate that remained at this point were torn down, but the stable building was gutted, re-enforced and turned into the Welland Securities offices in the Park Motor Inn. This remained Welland Securities (now HOCO)'s offices until Comfort Inn was torn down in 2015 (and the nearly 150 year old stable building with it). Quality Inn featured a restaurant and nightclub in it's lobby building: the T-bird room. The T-bird hosted a variety of early rock and roll acts over the years until it's eventual transition into a Golden Griddle and Q-Balls Billiards Pub in the 70s. The hotel also featured 4 swimming pools: a large outdoor pool, an outdoor kiddie pool, an indoor pool and an indoor hot tub. The Park Motor Inn only featured a single outdoor pool and hot tub (area became an enclosed atrium in the 70s.) However, it featured a gift shop (where Kelsey's has been since the 80s), the Queen' Door Nightclub (became Rumors Nightclub in the 80s, now divided up into multiple things like the relocated Kelsey's bathrooms and Zombie Attack) and Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum. Ripley's leased the land from Welland Securities. It was the second attraction in the Ripley company's popular chain of "Odditoriums", predated only by the original St. Augustine FL location. The Niagara Falls History Museum had opened a few blocks away in the early 1900s in the building currently occupied by the Bird Kingdom, but it was closer to a museum than a tourist attraction. Ripley's was the first real attraction to open up in Niagara.
Ripley's was a massive success, becoming Niagara's must visit location second only to the falls itself. It (along with Marilyn Monroe's breakthrough film "Niagara" in 1953) opened the floodgates, and by 1960, all the cabin courts had been demolished. In 1955, Charles Burland tore down his Niagara Falls Tourist Camp and bought all the land from the aforementioned field where Captain Jack's now is to Tussaud's. He tore down all the cabin courts on this land, building the Honeymoon City Motel (known as Travelodge since the early 2000s) in the place of Reinhard's Riverhurst Inn and his Niagara Falls Tourist Camp, a parking lot (now Castle Dracula) in the place of the Darling Cabins, and the Clifton Motor Inn (known as Thriftlodge since early 2000s) where Clifton Camp was. The Honeymoon City Motel had a restaurant where the Guinness museum now is, as well as the gift shop that's still there beside Guinness. Clifton Motor Inn had the Clifton Hill Family Restaurant in the old Camp Clifton restaurant building (still there), a "Bonanza" company shooting gallery (now replaced with a newer gallery) and the iconic Dairy Queen, which was then a Frostee Freeze. Burland responded to Ripley's in 1958 by opening the Life Museum in the former restaurant in the Honeymoon City and moving the restaurant a floor up (now Ruby Tuesday's.) The Life Museum was a bizarre attraction celebrating the life cycle from conception to death for both the male and female body, incredibly taboo for the time. Ripley's and the Life Museum would begin Clifton Hill's staple of bizarre attractions themed to the curious and macabre. In 1959 Louis Tussaud's Wax Museum had opened attached to the Foxhead Hotel where the building with the Pink Panther ride/former MGM attraction is now.
In 1960, 2 hotels opened between the Frostee Freeze and the old Victoria Ave. railway station at the top of the hill. These were the Clifton Motor Hotel (renamed the Pilgrim just 3 years later, now the building now occupied by Captian Jacks) and the Hilltop (the land now occupied by the Upside Down House.) With these hotels came Oneida Ln. running off Clifton Hill towards what's now Casino Niagara's Parking lot. Of course, in 1960, this was the parking lot for the Oneida Plate Factory that was the Casino Niagara building's original life. At the front of the factory between the 2 Falls Ave. hotels was the Antique Auto Museum, opened the same year, and a few years later in 1964 they would add a large observation tower sticking out the top as part of the factory tour, now the abandoned steel-plated tower that simply says "Casino". The Clifton Motor Hotel had a restaurant and gift shop on the main floor adjacent to the lobby as well as a pool on the third floor at the back of the building in a room with a glass ceiling. The Hilltop Motel's office was where Beavertails now is, and the motel contained a snack bar (now burger king), and 2 gift shops. One was in the current location of the Crystal Caves attraction. A fun history tidbit: this basement gift shop was leased out, and apparently a brother of the motel owner conspired with the gift shop operator in the mid 60s to run a bookie racket, but a Toronto investigator seemingly found out the jig fairly fast. This brother would mysteriously disappear years down the road in the 80s, which may or not have been related to his criminal activity nearly 20 years before. The other gift shop was what's now the first floolobby of the House of Frankenstein. The building was only one story at this point, seen here. The second story wouldn't be added until 1969, in a business move by local businessman Robert Dunham that would forever change the face of Niagara Falls, the world of animatronics, and the amusement industry as a whole. We'll cover that later in part 3.
Meanwhile, riding high on the success of Ripley's, Welland Securities leased more land to private companies for more attractions to be built starting in 1965. The first was a motel built between Quality Inn and the hill, the Cliffside. The Cliffside resided roughly where the employee parking space is now between Dinosaur Adventure Golf and the large cliff down to Victoria Park. It's driveway in off the hill was where the Great Canadian Midway now resides, as can be seen here. At the end of the motel farthest from the hill, it was adjacent to one of the wings of the Quality Inn. This often created confusion as to things like which lobby was who's, if guests from one were allowed to use the other's pool, etc. This confusion would end much later in 1989 when Welland Securities stopped leasing the land out and amalgamated the Cliffside into being part of the Quality Inn. Just down the hill from the driveway into the Cliffside was a small snack bar on land leased from Welland Securities by the same people as the Cliffside, with a miniature golf course on the roof.
Further up the hill, the last remaining gate house from the Zimmerman estate that was being used as a snack bar was torn down in 1965 to make way for a new attraction. Malcolm Howe leased the land from Welland Securities and would take 2 years to build a pivotal attraction: Movieland Wax Museum. Opened in 1966 in the building now occupied by Wizard's Golf and the Upper Canada Trading Co., the museum was on the main floor with a gift shop called Niagara Marketplace in the basement. All of the figures were sculpted by legendary halloween mask creator, artist Don Post at his Don Post Studios in Florida. Chances are, if you know anything about trick or treating from 1950 to the early 90s, you're familiar with a celluloid plastic mask created by Don Post. However, Post's artistic abilities went far beyond disposable plastic monsters. His team at the Florida factory, headed by sculptor Pat Newman, created 60 wax figures for the museum. The lobby was Egyptian themed, with two torches on either side of the door in to the white building and simulated Egyptian sandstone walls in the lobby. Beside the ticket booth in the lobby, just beside the entrance was Elizabeth Taylor dressed as Cleopatra from the 1963 film of the same name, with a cameraman and director filming her. The museum itself contained many stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Bing Crosby, Lucille Ball and Laurel and Hardy. The most impressive figure however was a 12 and half foot tall King Kong figure, the largest wax figure ever made at the time. The news article about his creation can be read here, however it incorrectly calls Movieland the "Hollywood Wax Museum". Noticeably absent from Movieland on opening day was a horror section. The notion of putting horror movie sections in wax museum hadn't caught on yet, with Tussaud's "Chamber of Horrors" being dedicated to torture methods and historical tyrants rather than film. This would later change and Movieland would receive a horror movie section as we'll cover in part 3.
To coincide with Movieland's opening, Howe also leased the land from Welland Securities just up the hill from the driveway into the Cliffside. On this land he constructed the 184 ft. tall Space Spiral Tower, built by Universal Design of Wildwood, New Jersey. The tower was half ride-half observation deck, with a large, circular, slowly spinning observation deck that rose up the tower that held 30 riders. This is exactly where the Fudge Factory now sits, as the store is circular because that was originally the loading area for the tower before it was demolished in 2006.
So by this point, the hill had gone from a budget, off the main strip camping and cabin area to a strip of motels and small attractions, with a large observation tower ride it's focal point. Motel strips like this could be found all throughout North America in the 60s, in tourist hot spots like Lake George, Gatlinburg and Myrtle Beach. But a single attraction was about to usher in a wave of arcades, haunted houses and testaments to the weird that would make Clifton Hill unlike anything else on earth... And it would all be thanks to a young artist, beloved city engineer, avid horror fan and technology wizard who was about to change everything. Stay tuned for part 3!

Niagara Ice Wine

Angela was the coolest supervisor I’ve ever had. At the time, we were working at a little advertising startup called Digital Marketing Technologies, or just DMT. She was a graphic designer and I was hired out of College to manage Google ad accounts. But to Brad, none of that mattered.

Brad was the owner and only salesman of our little startup. A balding, late thirties wannabe celebrity, he envisioned himself as the next Gary Vee. So much so that he regarded his LinkedIn self promotional videos as more important than his clients. He was a good salesman, but he had nothing even remotely approaching anything resembling knowledge on how to effectively run a business.

Case in point, almost all of the staff who wasn’t strictly video, were designated as ‘graphic designers’ whether or not they actually were one. That was the bucket I currently fell in.

Brad had tossed me into that position after jerking me around his company as an intern for the better part of a year, and treating me like absolute garbage.
At first, I took it with a smile, figuring that’s just how it was. While I was working under Angela though, she made it abundantly clear just how fucked up Brad actually was.

Being a young white man, with little experience, I didn’t see the rampant sexism, barely subdued racism and ethically dubious business practices that defined Brad. He hid it well for the most part under his fantastical razzle dazzle of technobabble and pompous self importance. He paraded around like a rock star, hosting $10,000 seminars in Toronto that no one came to, and uploading what he considered to be nuggets of marketing genius, most which were barely more than drunken ramblings. He was a sham and Angela saw right through him, and she made sure he didn’t try and fuck over his own employees.

Brad’s startup was already circling the drain. His VP, Craig had quit in a rage about a month ago, followed by his assistant Janice. With the structure of his upper management compromised, he’d made the crucial mistake of bringing in Jake.
Jake was Brad’s biggest fan. A mechanic by trade, who sold juice for a multi level marketing scheme on the side, his ‘job application’ had been an overlong fan letter that Janice had shared with us just before she left.

While Brad didn’t openly call him Craig’s replacement, that was basically what he was.I would have felt bad for him. An inexperienced Yes Man getting put into a role he couldn’t possibly fill. Maybe I could have even related, but Jake had one fundamental flaw.

He was every bit the asshole that Brad was, and something of a creep to boot. He stared at people too long, smiled too wide and acted so condescendingly friendly. He’d ask the stupidest questions in a tone that implied that YOU were the idiot who didn’t know what was going on, not the other way around. Like Brad, he fancied himself a Marketing guru. He even had his own website that was essentially a blank screen with a link to his merch store. Yes, he had a merch store. No, no one ever bought anything off of it. His one redeeming quality was that he was about as dumb as a box of rocks, and it was almost pathetically easy to slip stealth insults into casual conversation with him.

So, to put a lid on it all, DMT was already a rapidly sinking dumpster fire of a company, with more problems than I have time to list. Being the ‘genius’ that he was however, Brad had a fix.
Since the holidays were coming around, and I’m pretty sure it was impossible not to notice that his modest staff all hated him, Brad elected to throw the Christmas party early, and he wanted to pull out all the stops.
He booked everyone individual hotel rooms in Niagara Falls for a Thursday-Friday night of partying. To Brad, that meant enough alcohol to kill most living things and gambling away that years profits.
The idea was not a popular one… But, most of us stuck it out, hoping that maybe, just maybe it wouldn’t suck.

It did.

Angela and I had driven down together, and suffered through the disappointment together. I wouldn’t call that Thursday night much of a Christmas party, as much as a disorganized bender. We all watched Brad knock back drink after drink, getting louder and more obnoxious.
Given that it was a Thursday in November, very little was open late, and the evening barely lasted until around 10 before Brad decided it was time to hit the casinos!
I bowed out at that point. Gambling never interested me, and I had absolutely zero interest in watching Brad get hammered and waste more money that he probably didn’t have. He didn’t take that so well.
“Come on, Greg!” he slurred, just outside the Fallsview Casino. “Okay, I’ll tell you what. I’ll stake you. If you win, it’s yours man!”
“No thanks, it wouldn’t feel right to gamble with your money.” I said.

“Okay well… Okay… What about a years payroll, right?” He looked around at the others with us. I saw Angela’s brow crinkle in disgust.

“Let’s just pool it, and see where we get?!”
No one took him up on that offer, and he waved it off, enthusiastically going to feed another of his many addictions.

According to Angela when I talked to her the next morning, it had gone about as well as expected. Brad hadn’t gone broke, but he had needed Jake to carry him back to his hotel room. Angela herself had left shortly after I did and only got that information from one of the other ‘Graphic Designers’ Leanne.
As soon as we had the chance to leave, Angela and I were in my car and headed back to Hamilton.

“You know, you’d think he would’ve taken the hint that none of us wanted to go, but he did it, and then he wonders why no one had a good time. It’s Niagara Falls at midnight on a Thursday. Of course nothing was open!” Angela said as we drove.
“Well, least we got free food.” I said, it was just about the biggest and only positive aspect of the event.
Angela scoffed.
“Yeah… Funny how he ran out on the bill and made Jake pay.”
I hadn’t noticed that, but I still believed it.
She looked down at her phone, checking a game she was playing on it, before pausing.
“Oh shoot, hey, do you mind if we make a quick stop?”
“Not at all, why what’s up?”
“I figure we’re in wine country, right? I wanted to pick up some ice wine for my Mom, I didn’t really get the chance while we were in town.”
“I don’t really see why not.” I said, “Google it, lemme know if there’s a place nearby.”
She did, and sure enough there was a place a few exits ahead.
“Looks like the only one open today…” She murmured, “Greystone Winerys.”
She scrolled through their website for a bit, as the GPS told me where to go in a soothing British accent.

The exit led me to a narrow backroad. On either side of us, all I could see was empty farmland and sparsely populated trees. No sign of anything resembling a winery.
“How much further?” I asked, and she checked her phone.
“Says about fifteen minutes… I dunno, it’s acting up.”
I scanned the horizon for any indication of a driveway or something. But the road was just a straight unbroken line through empty lifeless land. The only sign of civilization was the phone lines on the side of the road.
“Up ahead!” Angela said, just when I thought I saw something past a patch of trees.
The turn she indicated led us to a worn out, empty parking lot. A skeletal gazebo sat in the middle of it, amongst patches of snow.
The building in front of that gazebo was old and looked almost Victorian. Behind it, I could see what a vineyard that looked strangely empty.
“This is the place.” Angela said, as I parked my car. I couldn’t help but admire that creepy parking lot. I snapped a photo of it, before following her to the building where she was trying the door.
“Locked.” She said, and frowned, “Maybe they aren’t open then.”
She checked her phone again, since there were no listed hours.
“Google probably just lists their summer hours.” I said, “This place has to be abandoned right now.”
“Yeah… Maybe I’ll stop off at a liquor store or something then. They might have some there.”
Angela seemed to shrug it off, and we headed back to the car after our very brief little adventure.

We were barely halfway there when I saw a familiar bright orange Corvette round the corner into the parking lot.
I actually felt disappointment upon seeing it.
The Corvette sped into a parking spot right beside my SUV, and Brad got out wearing the biggest grin on his face.
“Hey! What are you guys doing here!”
Jake got out of the passenger seat, as Brad approached us. Angela looked like she had to fight to keep from rolling her eyes and groaning in disappointment.
“Keeping the party going, huh, Champ?” Brad asked playfully, and punched me on the shoulder a little too hard.
“No… We were just stopping to-”
“Hey, we were gonna do a wine tasting! C’mon! Join us, it’ll be fun!”
That was the worst idea I had ever heard in my life, and I hated Brad even more for saying it.
“I really don’t feel like it.” I said, and Jake helpfully chimed in with;
“A bit of wine won’t kill you y’know, have some fun! It’ll be good for morale!”
He wore the sort of smile I imagine must have physically hurt to maintain. I also felt my eyes drawn to his shirt, which naturally came from his merch store, the one that no one on the planet knew existed except for him.

Shiitake Happens

Real original.

Brad was already pounding on the door of the winery as if the people who weren’t inside owed him money.
“HEY! COME ON! WE’RE HERE FOR A WINE TASTING!” He yelled. Amazingly, no one answered! Who’d have guessed?
“They’re closed.” Angela said, “We already tried.”
“But Google says they’re open!” Jake chirped.
“And no one’s here, so they’re closed.” Angela replied. Jake didn’t take the hint.
“But Google says-” He started to repeat, but he was thankfully cut off by a gruff voice behind us.
“We’re closed.”
A man had come around the side of the building. He looked gruff and wore wading overalls.
“Finally…” Brad murmured under his breath, “We’re here for a wine tasting!”
“Those are in the summer.” The man replied, “We’re closed for the season.”
“But you have wine, right?” Brad asked. The man frowned.
“We do… But we’re closed.”
“Well, obviously not entirely or you wouldn’t be here.” Brad said, and took out his wallet, “Look. We’re here for a wine tasting. For four…”
I started to protest, but Jake had to cut me off, to avenge the stupid sentence he didn’t get to finish earlier.
Angela sighed in exasperation.
“Yes sir, four please!”
Brad took a handful of bills I didn’t think he actually had, and offered them to the man.
“Come on, it’s fine!” He assured the man.
The Man just stared at him. He looked at Brad, then at Jake, then finally at Angela and I. He took the money and jammed it into one of his pockets.
“Come on then… I suppose I can arrange something since you came all this way. Lemme just call Mr. Greystone.”
He marched off towards the back of the building, fumbling with his cell phone and Brad followed him.

“I told you it was open!” Jake said smugly, as if Brad hadn’t just begged and bribed the man to give us a wine tasting.
Angela and I stayed put for a moment.
“Fuck it, let’s just go.” She said. Me, misconstruing that, took a weary step forward to follow. She hesitated for a moment, before going after me. She didn’t bother correcting herself.
The man led us to a long barn out behind the vineyard. Going through the empty grapevines felt a little unsettling, and as we headed out towards the barn, I heard the man and Brad talking.
“So, where abouts are you folks from?” He asked.
“Well, I’m from Texas originally, but I settled down here. Jake, you’re from… What, Oshawa? Hey Greg! What’s that town you live in again? Brantford? Our office is in Vaughan and this guy commutes from Brantford, can you believe that?”
I didn’t answer, even though he got it right. Angela trailed behind us, being ignored by Brad, but I could tell she was furious to be caught up in this.
“He’s supposed to be meeting with a client.” She said, once Jake and Brad were far enough ahead of us, “That’s where he said he was going this morning. Did you smell the booze on him?”
I hadn’t, but it wasn’t hard to guess that Brad was drunk.

“This is why he keeps losing business.” She said. We’d had conversations like this countless times before. I knew Angela had even brought it up with Brad, and he’d laughed it off.
The Man opened the barn door, letting us inside.
“I assume you’d like the tour first.” He said coolly.
“Hell yes we want the tour!” Brad said and immediately stepped inside, followed by the rest of us.
The Man followed us in, and closed the door behind us. As soon as he did, we heard another man speak.
“So, you’re the ones Archie found out front?”The speaker was a younger man in similar wading overalls. He had a full beard and sparkling blue eyes. His handshake was firm.
“I’m Isaac Greystone, I own the place. Archie tells me you were looking for a tour?”
“That and a tasting!” Brad said, and hastily introduced myself and Jake. He didn’t even bother introducing Angela.
“Well then, it’s a pleasure to meet you all. You just came at a really exciting time. We’re not open to the public right now, but I figure since you’re offering to pay for it, I might as well show you around, right?”
“Damn right.” Brad said, “A man after my own heart.”
Isaac tipped a thousand watt smile that almost rivaled Jakes.
“Well, let’s get started… I suppose you know how ice wine is made, right? How we freeze the grapes, and press them to make sure our wine is concentrated. It takes a little longer to ferment, but the final product is so, so worth it.”

He led us deeper into the barn. Massive machinery worked on the frozen grapes around us, and it was almost too loud to hear him speak clearly as he walked Brad and Jake through the process. I barely paid any attention, hoping we could just get this over with as soon as possible and looking for the earliest opportunity to make an excuse to leave.
“We just finished our harvest this year!” Isaac said, “So the wine we’re making now is going to keep us stocked for the next year or so. It’s not going to be ready quite yet, but we’ve still got some samples!”
“Well bring them out then!” Brad said, “Let’s taste these bad boys!”
Isaacs grin never faded, and he led us to a side room.
“I think you’re gonna love this.” He said, “We have a bit of a special fermenting technique, I can’t say too much about it right now. Trade secret and all, but it gives our wine just the right amount of body and personality. It’s why Greystone is one of the top selling ice wines in the world. We even have some exclusive labels, that we make special for some of our particularly discriminating clients…”

Isaac went behind a small bar, and fetched a couple of bottles of the ice wines from a fridge beneath it. He set out four glasses.

“So you do special blends?” Brad asked, and traded an approving look with Jake.“See that, that is branding. That’s what having a brand is all about!”
Jake nodded enthusiastically in approval.
“It’s amazing branding.”
I was pretty sure that had very little to do with branding.
“I’ve got some samples of those right here.” Isaac said, as if he hadn’t heard a word they were saying. He held up a bottle with the Greystone logo, and a stylized wolfs head on the label.
“This we manufacture for one of our best private companies. You ever heard of the Tallinn Corporation?”
“No, I don’t think I have, who are they?” Brad asked.
“Our best customers, that’s who. They’re Estonian, but they love us. Here. Try a glass…”
He filled all four glasses, and Brad immediately snatched one up. I saw Isaac set a bucket on the counter for us to spit the wine into after tasting it. I’d never been to a wine tasting before in my life, but even I knew you weren’t supposed to actually drink it.

Brad drank it. He drank it all in one big embarassing gulp. Isaac looked at him with a bit of surprise, as if he hadn’t quite expected that.
“Oh Jesus, that’s brisk!” Brad said, “Here, lemme have some more of that…”
Jake, for all his flaws, had the decency to drink the wine slowly. Angela didn’t drink at all. He did not however, have the decency to not make weirdly sexual moans as he enjoyed the drink. I hated it when he did that.
“Greg, try that!” Brad said, as Isaac filled up another glass for him. I took a sip. Never in my life had I ever had ice wine before, but it was delicious. Easily one of the sweetest things I’d ever tasted!
I spit it into the bucket.

“What? You don’t like it?” Brad asked.
“No, it’s delicious!” I said, “I just thought…”
“Well, here’s a toast then!” Brad raised his second glass, “Hey, Angela! Come on! Don’t be a spoilsport.”
Angela just glared at him, as if to ask ‘Do you know what the fuck you’re even doing right now?’ She set her glass down.
“No thanks.”
“Alright… Fine, whatever.” Brad said, shrugging it off. He tossed back the glass, and Jake attempted to do the same. I just took another sip and swallowed it. I guessed it would’ve been a shame to let it go to waste.
“That’s got kick…” Brad murmured. I watched as Angela headed towards the door.
“I think I’m just gonna wait by the car.” She said, and I understood that she wanted to get out of there. I did too.
“Greg, have some more!” Brad urged me. Angela was waiting by the door, before sighing and stepping out. I didn’t, and set my glass down.
“I think I’m good, actually. Angela’s got an appointment and we should get going.”
“Oh boo!” Brad said, “You can be a bit late, come on!”
“We’re already late.” Angela said, “Thanks for everything, Brad. Really. See you on Monday.”
She left abruptly and I followed.

“Who the hell does he even think he is?” She growled as she stormed towards the exit to the barn.
“Seriously, blowing off his meetings to go and get drunk? What an idiot!”
I tried to keep up with her, but was starting to feel a little woozy.
“Yeah, he’s a prick.” I murmured. Angela stopped in her tracks and looked back at me.
“Hey, you alright?”
“I think so.” I said. I could see the door to the barn, and the man who’d led us in, Archie, still standing out front of it.
“How strong was that wine?” I asked.

“It’s wine. There’s no way you’re drunk!”
I took another few steps forwards before my legs gave out from under me and I hit the ground. Angela was on top of my immediately.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Greg, Greg, are you alright?”
My vision was going hazy, and the last thing I remember was seeing Archie coming up behind Angela and raising something over his head.

I woke up to someone shaking me.

“Greg! Wake up, Goddamn you!”
I recognized the voice was Angela’s, and slowly as I came to, I could see her standing over me.

“Finally… I was beginning to think you weren’t waking up.”

“I’m awake…” I murmured, “What happened?”

“You passed out and someone hit me.” Angela replied, “We’re in deep shit, Greg… Look!”
My vision was groggy at first, but as I slowly pieced together my surroundings, I began to feel a creeping fear seep into my gut.
We were in a cell, and outside of those bars, was a sight I wish I’d never seen.

The machinery around us looked similar to what I’d seen before, but this was a completely different part of the factory. This looked more like a butcher shop.

I could see bodies, human bodies suspended from the ceiling. Their throats had all been cut, and I watched the blood dripping into one of six swimming pool sized mixing vats full of ice wine beneath them, and I suddenly felt sick. That was what I’d been drinking with Brad and Jake…
Just above the surface of the wine in each vat, a large propeller spun slowly, making sure that horrible concoction of blood and wine was evenly mixed.
I patted my pockets. No sign of my wallet, keys or cell phone. Of course they’d taken those.

“Angela? Greg?”Jake sounded like he was in the next cell over, and I’d never heard him so terrified in my life.

“What the hell happened!” I asked.

“I don’t know! We were drinking the wine, and then Brad was on the floor and… Jesus Christ, did they drug us?”
That was the most logical explanation, wasn’t it?

“Let’s just shut up, and figure a way out of here!” Angela said, “Jake, Brad’s in there with you, right?”

“No! They took him! I don’t know where! Jesus Christ, we need to get out of here! D-do you see the vat?”
Angela didn’t reply, but we’d all seen it, and we all knew that.
She reached up towards her hair, taking out a hairpin. Something that whoever had emptied our pockets had missed.
“I might be able to get this lock…” She murmured, and immediately set to work on it.

“Are you picking it? Come on, come on, come on…” Jake groaned, “Hurryyyyy.”
Angela worked diligently, before pausing suddenly, and putting her tools into her pockets. I heard the voices down the hall too.

“We’ll get them processed today and have this whole thing taken care of. Later on I’ll call our usual guy to get the cars... ”
I recognized the voice as Isaacs, and heard his footsteps getting closer.

“Ah, you’re awake!” He said. It sounded like he’d stopped in front of Jake’s cell.

“What the hell do you want from us?!” I heard Jake say, “You can’t just keep us here! Where’s Brad!?”

“Well, like I said you’ve come at an interesting time…” Isaac replied. His tone was even and calm. “Usually, we buy our secret ingredient from the Tallinn Corporation. They deal in that sort of thing mostly. People go missing in the old Soviet Union all the time and no one cares. So we don’t really hurt anyone and we get a better tasting product! But, we do care a lot about quality and we’d like to keep all our ingredients locally sourced, if you catch my meaning.”

“W-what the hell…?” It sounded like Jake was crying and Isaac chuckled.

“You’ll see soon enough… Shock him, let’s get him processed.”

I heard Jake scream as he was tased, and the sound of the cell door opening.
Archie and another worker carried Jake past our cell. As they passed, Isaac stepped into our view.

“Hey there.” He said smoothly, “I understand if you’re not excited to be in this position… I got the feeling you two didn’t really want to get dragged into this.”

“No shit!” Angela snapped, “Where are you taking him?”

“To become part of the Greystone legacy.” Isaac teased, and looked up towards the bodies hanging above the mixing vats.
“It’s a slow process, but quality takes time… Anyways, I wanted to say, before you get angry, that I am sorry you got dragged into this.”
He smiled, and walked away from us, following the others.

Angela was silent for a bit, listening to his footsteps fade. When she was sure he was gone, she got the hair clip out of her pocket, and worked on the lock with renewed vigor. It didn’t take long until we heard the click of the lock, but Angela didn’t open it. It didn’t take me long to see why.

Archie, his associate and Jake came into view again, this time on a catwalk above the nearest mixing vat.
Jake was still unconscious, which made it easy to bind his ankles and place a hanging hook through the rope.
“W-what…” Jake’s voice was faint and echoed from the distance, but he was starting to come to. He let out a startled yelp as the hook yanked him up just like the other bodies.
“Wait, WAIT, WAITWAITWA-”
He didn’t get to finish his pleasing. Archie pulled a knife from his overalls, and opened his throat. Jake squirmed and choked out his death rattle, blood pouring over his face and dripping into the vat below.
Shiitake happens.

The other worker took a long pole, and used it to push Jake out towards the other bodies, right over the center of the mixing vat.
We watched as they prodded the others, before choosing a few to pull towards them and take down.
As soon as they were gone, she opened the door to our cell.
“We’re leaving.” She said curtly. I didn’t argue. For a moment, I thought about Brad, but Jake had said they’d already taken him. He was probably dead, and I could have cared less!

Neither of us knew which way to go, but we opted for the way that Archie and the other worker hadn’t taken Jake. That way led to a hall that seemed impossibly long, and on either side were massive chilled vats of Ice Wine.
I tried not to think about just how many people had died to fill these… But the thought still came.How many people around the world were unknowingly drinking human blood in their wine? How many people did it knowingly?

Down the hall, I heard a voice, and paused.I ducked into the narrow space between one of the vats, and I saw Angela doing the same across from me.

“50% in under three months, now that is unprecedented growth, but it’s doable! I’ve done it. Not everyone can, but if you’ve got the product, you’ve got the brand, and you’ve got the know how, it’s already done!”
That was Brad’s voice!
I had to peek out from behind my vat, and I saw him and Isaac passing through the hall in front of us, side by side like old friends.
“It’s a bold claim.” Isaac said. I wasn’t sure if he was impressed or not, “But you sound like you can back it up.”

“Dude, if you just let me show you my numbers, gimme a phone, something. I won’t try anything! But I’m telling you, you’re making the right call. Those other guys? Fuck ‘em. They’re disposable, I mean, hell. I was honestly looking for a chance to get rid of Angela anyways. But me, I’m the one you wanna keep. I get it, this whole operation here, it’s about adding value to your brand. What you’re doing gives the wine it's signature flavor, and it’s honestly kinda hardcore! I dig that! But you and I both know, that I can give you more value right here, like this, then I would in a bottle of wine.”
Isaac and his workers were going to slaughter us for wine, and Brad was trying to fucking sell them on his service?
I sincerely hoped someone would show up to drag Brad off to the same fate Jake had met, but I didn’t get that wish.

“Well, if you’re half of what you claim… Maybe you’d be worth it.” Isaac said thoughtfully. He idly played with his beard. “Let’s say I kept you around, huh? I’m gonna need to make sure you don’t try anything. I’ll give you what you need to work. Just work. Nothing else. You let me down, and you’re going in with the next batch.”

“Hey, that’s A-okay with me! I just want the chance!” Brad said, grinning from ear to ear, “Trust me. You and me are gonna do some amazing shit.”
Isaac nodded slowly, and from my vantage point, I could see the rage on Angela’s face, but she stayed still.
“HEY! CELL’S EMPTY!”
Archie’s voice cut through the hall, and both Brad and Isaac looked up suddenly.
“They’re out. Find them.” He said, “They can’t be far!”
Isaac was coming towards us again, with Brad trailing behind him. I heard Archie coming up from the opposite direction, and I realized that sooner or later, one of them was going to see us. I think Angela knew it too.
She moved suddenly, running for her life, and I did the same, but I wasn’t as fast.
She slipped past Brad easily enough, but I didn’t get past Isaac.

He grabbed me, and I felt Archie grabbing me too. Both of them wrestled me to the ground, and the last thing I remember was a terrible jolt of electricity before everything went black.

I woke up in the hall. I don’t know how long later. Archie and another worker had me draped over their shoulders, and dragged me slowly. Ahead of me, I saw Isaac.
“Shock him again.” Isaac said. I hadn’t even given any indicator that I was awake, but Archie didn’t waste any time. I didn’t pass out this time, but I wasn’t in any condition to fight.
“I know you probably think this is barbaric.” Isaac said, still not looking at me, “It’s… well, an old family tradition. One gets desensitized to it. But as heinous as this all must seem, I need you to understand that this really does make it a superior product! The blood sweetens the wine, and the corpses do wonders for the vineyard. Every year, we have a bountiful harvest. It’s because of this that we’re the best, and if your friend Brad delivers on his promise, we might even be the biggest.”
Up ahead, I saw the hanging bodies… But now they were much closer to eye level.
“I wouldn’t take it personally.” Isaac said, and stopped, letting us pass him.
“Make it quick for this one!” He ordered, “Suffering taints the wine.”
With that, I heard him walking away.
We were at one of the vats, and Archie shocked me one last time. I felt his associate starting to tie my legs together. Archie pulled the knife from his overalls.
“It’s never personal, kid.” He said gruffly. I looked at the knife, my heart racing as I waited for what was coming.
Then I heard the worker behind me scream, along with a dull thud. Archie looked up, and I caught a glimpse of Angela behind us. She was holding a shovel, and swung it ruthlessly at Archie’s head. It bounced off his shoulder and he grunted in pain.
I didn’t have much time to react, but by God I made the most of it!

I grabbed him by the wrist, and jerked his arm towards me, then I sank my teeth into the skin. His grip on the knife loosened, and I tore it out of his hands.
Archie kicked out blindly at Angela when she tried to hit him with the shovel again. He uselessly slapped at me to try and keep me away from him, but I had the knife now, and I put it in his throat.
It was very personal.

Archie twitched, eyes looking up at me in surprise, but as the blood trickled out of his throat, his body went limp.
I was panting heavily, and looked over at Angela. The worker she’d hit lay on the ground, unconscious or dead. I didn’t care which.
“Are you alright?” She asked, and I absentmindedly nodded, before backing away from Archie’s body.
“I just killed this guy…”
“Yeah. I guess you did…” Angela replied, “Take the knife, we need to go and…” She swallowed, “We might need it.”
I didn’t want to touch that knife. I didn’t even want to look at Archie. I wanted to scream and cry and lose my shit, but I did what she said. It came out easier than I expected.
Angela started down the hall again, and I followed, still a little shell shocked from committing a murder!
“After I split off from you, I found what I’m pretty sure was Isaacs office.” Angela said, “Here, we needed these.”
I saw her reaching into her pocket for my car keys and wallet.
“Our phones were missing. Probably broken.”
“Shit… We can’t call for help then?”

“Which is why we need to focus on getting the hell out of here.” Angela replied,
We moved silently. For the time being, there was no sign of any other employees, but we didn’t want to risk it. We both knew there was more than Archie and his associate lurking around.

In a few moments, we’d made it back to the lower level of the mixer room.
“I think the door to the main factory is down that way.” Angela said, “We just need to find it, and-”
A gunshot cut her off. She ducked, and looked around for the source. I saw it before she did, and pulled her towards one of the vats. We ducked beneath it to avoid another shot.
“Found you!” Brad cried, “Ah shit… I guess you picked up Greg too, huh?”
He held the gun professionally as he crept towards the vat we cowered behind.

“Well, I’ve got enough ammo to do you both. I hope you know it’s nothing personal! But it’s honestly just me or you, and even with the… well, unusual recipe, this is still a big client! Do you have any idea what this is gonna do for DMT? Isaac gets me, man!”
He was drawing nearer, but even when he had us cornered, Brad was still an idiot. The second he got close to our hiding spot, I was ready. He came into view slowly, and I lunged at him when he did, catching him off guard.

The knife went into his shoulder, and I caught the gun across my face. Angela was on him next, tearing at the knife and trying to rip it out of him. Brad struggled against her, and frantically brought the butt of his gun down on her head, over and over again.
He shoved Angela off of him, and she hit the ground holding the handle of the knife. The blade poked out of Brads shoulder.He grinned through gritted teeth as we took aim at her, but he wasn’t watching me.

I was on my feet again and I grabbed his arm, forcing it upwards. He fired off a stray bullet, but it went harmlessly into the ceiling.
Brad may have had a gun, but I was bigger than him. Angela recovered and went with the age old trick of going straight for the groin. I went for the stomach. Brads grip on his gun loosened. I watched as Angela tried to rip it from his hand. But Brad saw that coming. With a jerk of his arm, he sent the gun flying across the factory floor. I didn’t see where it landed. His elbow caught me in the face, and I barely had time to see him drive his fist into Angela’s jaw. He grabbed her by the throat, and got ready to punch again.

I grabbed him from behind and tried to drag him off of her. Brad flailed helplessly, and I almost got him there, before his head slammed into my face. The first time just stunned me. The third time, I had to let go. Brad glared hatefully at us once he was free.

“I shouldn’t be surprised you two are the ones I have to deal with right now. You’ve always been a poison to MY company, Angela. Since I hired you you’ve been trying to cripple MY success!” His eyes shifted to me.

“And you? You’re just dead weight! I am DONE with you people! I am DONE with your disrespect!”
He probably had more to say, but Angela didn’t give him the chance. She’d noticed something that Brad hadn’t.
He was standing right in front of a vat.

As he opened his mouth to speak again, she lunged for him, pushing him back towards it. I caught on quickly and went to help her. Between the two of us, we were able to press him right up against the vat.

Angela and I traded a brief look, before I ducked down, grabbing Brad by the legs. She pushed him by the shoulders. Brad struggled, but he went into that vat of blood and wine. The mixers arm was coming around again. I know Brad saw it in the moment before it struck him over the head. I don’t know if it killed him, but the force of it pulled him into the vat entirely. Given how little of a struggle there was, I’d have guessed it just knocked him unconscious. The arm dragged him around the vat slowly, his head submerged in that disgusting mixture of blood and wine he’d been willing to murder us over.

We didn’t stick around to see if he was ever going to wake up, and as far as I’m concerned, he drowned in that vat.
I wish I'd said 'Cheers'.

The next room was more familiar territory. This was part of what Isaac had shown us, and we sprinted for the door, and through the empty vineyard. It was starting to get dark. Halfway through it, I let myself look back. I could see people coming out of that long barn, and I didn’t wait for them to start running after me.The gazebo was up ahead, along with my car and Brad’s ugly orange coupe. I didn’t waste any time getting inside my car, and as soon as Angela and I had our doors closed, we were speeding off down our driveway, as fast as we could go.

We drove until the next town over, and made it to the police station looking like hell. I’m pretty sure my statement came out as a rambling incoherent mess, but I didn’t care. I told them just about everything… except the part where I murdered Archie and helped drown Brad.

If the Police believed my statement… I never found out. I heard talk of an investigation, but from what I understood, they found nothing. Not even Brad’s ugly orange coupe.

DMT dissolved quickly without him. He and Jake were just considered to have disappeared. Brads so called ‘fans’ barely seemed to notice his absence.Our story never got out.

I still talk with Angela on occasion, but we don’t talk about Niagara. The unspoken agreement is that we did what we had to do, to survive. We both know that, and we don’t need to remember.

I almost wish we could talk about it though… I wish I could talk to her about the nightmares I’ve had of drowning in a vat of freezing cold wine. I wish I could talk to her about the anxiety I have whenever I’m alone. I wish I could tell her that I received a bottle of ice wine from Greystones Winery in the mail the other day.

Because I don’t know who else to tell.

I wish I knew if Isaac is congratulating me on my escape, mocking me for my inability to stop him… or warning me...

[PI] Snake Eyes - Superstition - 3152 Words

Working at a casino was not exactly #lifegoals.
But it was better, I reflected, as I glanced down at my scratchy pink poodle skirt and ankle-grinding roller skates, than being a waitress at a Fifties theme restaurant.
Anything is better than working at a theme restaurant. Believe me. If you hear ‘Fifties restaurant’ and start dreaming of Uma Thurman and John Travolta dancing with wild abandon, stop it. Tarantino lied to you. It’s just screaming children and drunk tourists, all the way down.
Which was why, when my Friday morning shift in that hell finally ended, I shrugged back into street clothes and left for my interview at the Grand Imperial Casino with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. I’d hoped that by my twenty-fourth year of life, I’d be interviewing for something a bit more ambitious than blackjack dealer at the newest addition to the Las Vegas strip, but at this point I’d take what I got.
The bus ride downtown was boring, so I’ll break here to introduce myself: my name is Mika. Well, technically, my name is Miguelita Hortensia Maria Francisca de Toledo Rosario Vasquez. But that’s too long even by Mexican standards, so go ahead and call me Mika Rosario, because that’s going to save us both a bunch of time.
Yeah, you think YOU hate going to the DMV.
Anyway, today was going to be my day. I’d traded shifts with one of the other girls who owed me a favor and put up with the desperately sad crowd that wanted to eat breakfast surrounded by bored actors dressed up like extras from Grease, because this afternoon was important. This afternoon was my ticket out of the world of waitressing, even if that ticket only took me a few blocks down the road. No more poodle skirts, no more roller skates, no more children competing to see who can snort a milkshake through their nose, no more teenage boys leering at my cleavage until their eyes fell out.
I mean, I was applying to work at a casino, so I was pretty much just trading those teenage stares in for a whole new set, courtesy of a horde of middle-aged middle-managers in from the Midwest for a convention on midsize sedans, but at least it was a change. My boobs were looking forward to the variety.
So, there I was, sitting in a massive ballroom at the Grand Imperial with about four hundred other people, waiting for my name to be called. It was a nice ballroom, if nothing else, with real white linens on the tables and carpet that didn’t look like they stole the design from a Dixie cup in 1997. It ought to be nice, though, since the newspapers claimed that this place had cost over a billion dollars just to build, never mind the cost of buying out land on the Strip.
All the more reason to get my foot in the door here. If this Robbie Mo guy that came in from Macau to set up the Grand Imperial had that kind of money to throw around, then there had to be a way for me to work my way up through the ranks to where I’d get some real cash.
And no more roller skates.
“Me-gall-nita… Rose-mario?”
The call came at last and I sprang up, smiling as broadly as I knew how and ignoring the way the guy with the list butchered my name. They could call me Mud, for all I cared, so long as they got me away from Big Donny’s Roller-Diner.
The first few rounds of the mass interview were easy, to be honest. Out of all those hundreds of people massed in the ballroom, the Grand Imperial people eliminated three hundred with a simple test as to whether or not they even knew how to play blackjack, let alone deal professionally. Most of them, apparently, couldn’t even count to twenty-one.
I breezed through that round, and the two that came after it. I’d been slinging blackjack since I was eight, when my dad first set me down and made me help him practice counting cards. Carlos Rosario was a ‘professional’ gambler. Professional, in the sense that it was the only plan he ever had to make money and support his family, and ‘professional’ in the sense that he lost more than anybody I’ve ever seen, no matter how he tried to cheat.
Anyway, dealing was easy. I threw in a few flippy bits, flicking aces from one knuckle to the other before returning them to the shuffle, and dancing the spread back and forth before snapping cards out to my nonexistent players. It was simple stuff that any idiot could learn on YouTube, but the interviewers ate it up, whispering to each other like sixth-grade girls.
It was round four when everything got weird.
My first clue that I’d merged onto the highway to the crazy zone was when a man in a black suit asked me to follow him. He was tall and blond, super hot in a ‘my sense of humor was surgically replaced with a third fist’ kind of way, and he escorted me into an elevator made of mirrors without ever saying more than three words at a time. All the previous rounds of the interview had been held in partitioned temporary rooms on one side of that huge ballroom, but apparently those of us who made it to the final round got to see a nicer bit of the Grand Imperial.
That was what I thought on the elevator ride, anyway. I had no idea exactly how nice the bit I’d be seeing was until I stepped off on the 50th floor and felt my jaw drop so far that it should’ve hit the floor.
Gold. Enough gold to make the Pope blush, enough gold to buy out the king of Spain, enough gold to...I don’t even know. There was nothing I could think of buying, nothing that I could even IMAGINE, that required that much money.
It was a lot of freaking gold.
Hot Security Guy frog-marched me through Versailles 2.0 like we were walking down a blank concrete hallway instead of something out of Liberace’s nightmares, before plopping me down opposite the final interviewer.
He was Asian, probably Chinese or Japanese extraction, middle-aged and friendly-looking, like his face naturally wanted to smile. Bit of gray at his temples, bit of extra padding at the belly, but it all seemed to suit him, like he’d been destined to be that way since he was born. Somebody’s kindly grandpa, except he wasn’t old enough yet.
He didn’t say much as I ran through my dealing routine, which didn’t exactly make me happy. A bead of sweat ran down the back of my neck the moment I picked up the deck set on the desk between us, a bead that turned into a river, that turned into Niagara Falls by the time I was done. I pulled out a few extra tricks at the end, flashy little flips that I wouldn’t usually dare try with anybody watching, even palmed a joker into the deck and spun it out face-up, but it was like trying to get blood from a stone. Friendly Grandpa’s smile never so much as twitched, for good or bad.
Finally, I couldn’t take it.
“Look, that’s what I’ve got,” I vented, cascading the deck back together and slapping it down on the desk. “If you’re looking for more...frankly, I don’t know who the hell you’re looking for. Four rounds of interviews, for a job dealing blackjack? That’s just stupid.”
Uh oh.
There it went, then. My chance to bust out of the land of pink poodle skirts and greaser jackets. Great job, Mika; all you had to do was keep your mouth shut and flip the cards, but you had to let your temper get the best of you.
Then the interviewer finally spoke.
“Do you know who I am, Miss Rosario?”
I gulped.
“My new boss?” I suggested lamely, mustering up my best plucky smile.
“My name is Mo Ka-Fai,” he informed me, as I felt my blood turn to ice. “Most people around here call me Robbie.”
Robbie...Mo...
Robbie Mo.
ROBBIE FREAKING MO.
AKA the guy who owned the casino I was sitting in, plus half of the Mirage and who knew how many more in Macau. The news hadn’t stopped talking about how stupid rich he was since they first broke ground on the Grand Imperial.
“Oh,” I squeaked. So I hadn’t just mouthed off at my interviewer and tanked my chances of getting the dealer job, I’d insulted a man who could literally blackball me from the entire city of Las Vegas if he felt like it.
That was bad.
“Sorry.”
“I didn’t tell you that to spook you, Miss Rosario,” Mo announced, a sentiment that did nothing to unfreeze my spine or untwist my stomach. “That wasn’t the point. The point was to let you know that you are dealing with the person who makes decisions. A serious person. Somebody who is not in the business of making jokes or playing pranks. Is that clear to you?”
I nodded like a bobblehead doll. He wasn’t telling me to leave, at least. That had to mean I was still in the running for the job...right?
“Good,” he continued. “Jason, bring in the kittens.”
He gestured over my shoulder towards Hot Security Guy, as I felt my brow knit in confusion. Had he just said...kittens?
What?
Lo and behold, the kittens were...actual cats. HSG disappeared behind a side door, only to reappear a moment later with a cardboard box full of mewing little fluffballs in at least a dozen colors, two or three tiny heads peeking above the lip to see what was happening. The box was deposited at my feet, whereupon two dozen curious eyes blinked up at me.
“Um,” I managed, my eyebrows raised so far I felt like they were going to get lost in my hair. “What?”
“Close your eyes and pick a kitten, please,” Mo requested.
I just stared at him.
“I am aware that it sounds absurd, Miss Rosario. But this will all make sense in a moment, if things are as I suspect.”
I stared at him for another long moment, then shrugged. I liked cats just fine, and he still seemed to be considering me for the job, so...why not?
Eyes closed tight, I leaned down and worked my hands into the pile of kittens. A few nips and playful scratches later, I managed to snag one of the fluffy little things and lift it up away from its siblings.
I opened my eyes to see a pure black fuzzball sitting in my palms, staring at me with eyes as gold as the extravagant walls. He blinked a few times, looking around to see where the rest of his family had gone, then curled up with his tail over his eyes.
Mo breathed in sharply, and whispered something in a language I didn’t know, eyes widening.
“Black,” murmured Hot Security Guy. “It’s black.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I replied, exploring new depths of confusion. “Here, you want to hold him?”
HSG backed away like I’d offered to shoot him in the kneecap.
“N-no!” he yelped, then cleared his throat. “I mean, no thank you, Miss Rosario. Please continue the interview.”
“The straws,” hissed Mo, as I turned back to him. “Bring the straws!”
Jumping like he was scalded, HSG disappeared back into the side room and came back with a large, blue porcelain vase bristling with...were those drinking straws?
They were. Long red plastic straws, like the ones that you got at the movie theater Slushee machine, with a little spoon on the end so you could scoop up the ice bits. There were tons of them packed into the vase, so tight they barely even rustled as Hot Security Guy placed it next to the kittens.
“There are one thousand straws in that vase,” Mo told me, as if that weren’t an utterly bizarre thing to say. “Each one has a number printed on the end, one to one thousand. Do you understand?”
I nodded again, scratching the black kitten’s head absently. I was this far into what was comfortably the strangest job interview of my entire life, no point arguing over a vase full of straws.
“Good. Choose one, and read me the number, please.”
Dutifully, I shifted my new fuzzy friend into my left hand while I reached down with my right and wormed a nail into the forest of straws. It had to be some kind of eccentric rich guy thing, testing people with kittens and straws before he hired them, I decided.
“Thirteen,” I recited, reading off the tiny black number punched into the end of my straw.
Hot Security Guy literally backpedalled away from me, while Mo looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“Thirteen?” he breathed. “Are you certain? Out of one thousand straws, you picked thirteen?”
“Yep,” I confirmed, laying the straw on the table for him. “One-three. That makes thirteen to me.”
The kitten in my hand started to stretch and mew, pawing for the top of the desk and obviously yearning to explore. I lifted him up and let him clamber out of my palm, since Mo seemed more interested in staring at the little number on the straw than actually interviewing me.
The one percent is freaking weird.
“Right, Miss Rosario,” Mo finally breathed, shaking himself away from inspecting the straw and seeming to collect himself. “Right. Yes. Thank you for bearing with us. I have one more test for you.”
This time, instead of sending Hot Security Guy to fetch, he reached into the drawer of his desk and produced an finely carved set of ivory dice in a plush black velvet box.
“Roll them, please.”
I didn’t move.
“I’d rather not,” I hedged. “I deal cards. I don’t gamble.”
That was my rule. Ever since I was eleven, ever since I’d watched my father walk out of the house with all the money we’d saved for my mom’s chemo and come back with empty hands, that had been the rule.
I don’t gamble. Ever.
“I am not asking you to gamble, Miss Rosario,” Mo countered. “There is no money on the table. Just the dice. Roll them, please.”
My jaw locked up and my fingernails bit into my palm, but I forced myself to reach for the dice. There was no way I was going to avoid ever touching a set, if I intended to work in a casino. And Mo was technically right; I wasn’t betting on anything and there was no money at stake, so it wouldn’t be gambling.
Just a roll of the dice.
Breath caught in my throat, I picked up the dice, shook them once, and then dropped them like a poisonous snake.
A brief clatter, and then they came to rest, one pip glinting from each face.
One and one.
Snake eyes.
“Two,” breathed HSG. “She rolled a two. She actually rolled a-!”
“Quiet, Jason,” Mo snapped. “Again, if you please, Miss Rosario.”
He collected the dice and passed them back across the desk to me. The corner of my lip twisted in distaste, but I nevertheless accepted them, shook, and cast.
Two pips stared back at me. Snake eyes, just like before.
“Again.”
Take, shake, roll.
Two pips. Snake eyes.
“Okay, what the hell is going on?” I demanded. “First you make me go bobbing for kittens and pick out a Slushee straw, and now you’re making me roll a loaded pair of dice? Does this have anything to do with me dealing blackjack?”
“The dice are not loaded,” Mo stated, grandfatherly smile all but gone, now. “Inspect them yourself. And then roll, again.”
I retrieved the dice and rolled them through my fingers, weighing them against each other, and then froze. An electric tingle ran up my spine and down to my fingers, as I realized that Mo was on the level. I knew what trick dice felt like in my hand; my dad had made me test out the sets he carved in our garage.
These were legit.
Which meant…
I rolled the dice, flinging them hard against the table. One spun like a top, fluttering about before finally tipping over with one pip to the sky. The other skated across the desk, nearly colliding with the adventuring kitten, and flew off onto the floor.
Where it landed with one pip showing.
Snake eyes.
“Again.”
Beginning to feel extremely freaked out, I did as Mo asked, taking a new pair of dice from him and casting them across the desk.
Two pips. Snake eyes.
“Again.”
My hand shook all on its own this time, barely steady enough to hold both dice together. They toppled away from me, less a cast, and more a drop.
It didn’t matter. Twp pips glinted in the light, reflecting the golden ornamentation.
Snake eyes.
“Again.”
Again, and again, and again. Over and over, Mo made me roll the dice, and every time the result was the same: two pips. Twenty times in a row, I rolled snake eyes.
Which was, mathematically speaking, almost impossible.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked again, but this time I really, truly meant it. My voice was barely a squeak, choked by an iron bar lodged in my throat. “What does this mean?”
“It means, Miss Rosario, that you are the unluckiest person alive.”
I blinked. Even in the grip of an utter and complete confusion, I had enough of my mother’s pride left in me to be insulted.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, I mean that very literally,” Mo said, standing up from his desk and sharply correcting his suit jacket. “You, Miguelita Hortensia Maria Francisca de Toledo Rosario Vasquez, are the most unlucky human being on the planet. And that makes you extremely dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” I spluttered. “What do you mean, dangerous? How am I-?”
“We do not have time for me to answer that question,” Mo interrupted, gesturing for her to stand. “Suffice it to say that there are those of us who play probability and odds like a musician plays his instrument. And we’ve been looking for you, Miss Rosario. Looking for you for quite some time.”
I opened my mouth to demand more than that, or maybe to just sputter in wild confusion, but Mo steamrolled over me.
“Jason, call ahead to the helipad and tell them to spin up the chopper,” he ordered tersely, glancing to Hot Security Guy. “I want to be wheels up in fifteen minutes. We need to go, now.”
“Go?!” I snapped, finally untangling my tongue. “Go where?”
“To meet with Lady Luck.”

The HUGE Significance of 11/14 or 11/5

After my last post about Regulus and bringing up the Nov 14th date spoken about in the Trackdown - End of the World Episode again, I started doing some more digging. It's important you read that post before you can understand this one. You can find it here.

The name of the asteroid that occulted the star Regulus for 14 seconds on March 20, 2014 was called 163 Erigone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/163_Erigone

163 Erigone is an asteroid from the asteroid belt and the namesake of the Erigone family of asteroids that share similar orbital elements and properties. It was discovered by French astronomer Henri Joseph Perrotin on April 26, 1876, and named after one of the two Erigones in Greek mythology.
Erigone is a relatively large and dark asteroid with an estimated size of 73 km. Based upon its spectrum, it is classified as a C-type asteroid, which indicates that it probably has a carbonaceous composition.
2014 occultation of Regulus
In the early morning hours of March 20, 2014, Erigone occulted the first-magnitude star Regulus as first predicted by A. Vitagliano in 2004. This would have been a rare case of an occultation of a very bright star visible from a highly populated area, since the shadow path moved across New York state and Ontario, including all five boroughs of New York City. Observers in the shadow path would have seen the star wink out for as long as 14 seconds.
However, heavy clouds and rain blocked the view for most if not all people on the shadow path. The website of the International Occultation Timing Association does not list any successful observations at all.
Two single chord Asteroid Occultation events have been observed, in 2013 and 2014

The fact that no one actually witnessed it is REALLY interesting and must play some sort of dynamic to all of this.

The name Erigone seems to refer to 2 different Greek goddesses

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erigone_(daughter_of_Icarius))

Icarius was cordial towards Dionysus, who gave his shepherds wine. They became intoxicated and killed Icarius, thinking he had poisoned them. His daughter, Erigone, and her dog, Maera, found his body. Erigone hanged herself over her father's grave. Dionysus was angry and punished Athens by making all of the city's maidens commit suicide in the same way. Erigone was placed in the stars as the constellation Virgo.
According to Ovid, Dionysus "deceived Erigone with false grapes", that is, assumed the shape of a grape cluster to approach and seduce her.

Dionysus was the god of winemaking. He was responsible for the growth of the vines.

John 15
"I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."

Sounds like this one is associated with an Antichrist like Figure pretending to be Jesus since wine represents his blood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erigone_(daughter_of_Aegisthus))

Erigone would have been slain by Orestes along with her brother Aletes if not for the intervention of Artemis, who rescued her and made her a priestess in Attica. In some stories, she hangs herself after the child is born, though this may be a confusion with Erigone, daughter of Icarius. Also, after Hermione died, she is said to have married Orestes and gave birth to Penthilus. Or it is said she sued Orestes to murder of her parents.

Orestes murdered his own mother then went crazy. Satan/Yahweh have other gods related to them where they are rejected by their mothers or don't have one, which is why they are narcissists who hate women and why we he kicks Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden (Mother Nature) and curses women to be subservient to men (read more about this idea here). Revelation speaks of the Red Dragon trying to kill a newborn baby and the woman who birthed him. She then goes somewhere in the wilderness, where God held a place for her until its time. God in this story apparently, is Artemis or Diana. She's not dead, she's just hiding until Orestes (humanity) attones for what he did. This stuff correlates to so much more, I might have to make another post just about this.

I came across this date (11/14) towards the beginning of my journey and I never went back looking into it because it felt like a dead end besides a couple of VERY key significances. Nov 14th is both the day the "Great Comet" is discovered in 1680 and the day that Einstein presented his Quantum Theory of Light in 1908. Looking at this list now, I see WAY more correlations with this to the point it's getting ridiculous. And it seems this date is a sort of pendulum point in time because we have instances of people winning their freedoms, overtaking governments and rulers being killed and we have instances of enslavement, attacks and new kings getting crowned. I wonder which way Earth is going to go in this timeline. Also important to note 11/14 = 1 + 4 = 5 = 11/5 = 1 + 1 + 5 = 7

"Remember, Remember the 5th of November"

Transitions and Abuses of Power

1380 King Charles VI of France crowned at age 12
1698 Spanish king Carlos appoints grandson prince Jozef Ferdinand as heir
1863 Nathan Bedford Forrest is assigned to command of West Tennessee
1881 Charles J. Guiteau put on trial for the assassination of US President Garfield
1881 Leon Gambetta forms French government
1907 The Third Duma (Parliament) meets in Russia; following Tsar Nicholas II's limiting of the franchise, a conservative majority holds sway and suppresses the radical elements
1908 Liberal candidate Jose Miguel Gomez wins national elections for president in Cuba
1915 Tomáš Masaryk demands independence for Czechoslovakia
1918 Republic of Czechoslovakia created with Tomáš Masaryk as its 1st president
1919 Red Army captures Omsk, Siberia
1920 The Russian Bolshevik army occupies Sebastopol, ending anti-communist attempts to regain the government of Russia
1921 The Communist Party of Spain is founded
1922 German Reichs Chancellor Joseph Wirth's term ends
1935 FDR proclaims Philippine Islands a free commonwealth
1935 Nazis deprive German Jews of their citizenship
1942 Last Vichy-French troops in Algeria surrender
1945 Java: Sutan Sjahrir appointed as forming government
1952 Greek General Alexander Papagos wins elections
1954 Egyptian President Naguib resigns, state of emergency declared
1956 Hungarian revolt put down by Soviet invasion
1957 The Apalachin Meeting outside Binghamton, New York is raided by law enforcement, and many high level Mafia figures are arrested
1965 US government sends 90,000 soldiers to Vietnam
1966 Muhammad Ali TKOs Cleveland Williams in 3 for heavyweight title
1971 Enthronment of Pope Shenouda III as Pope of Alexandria
1980 Guinee-Bissau Premier Vieira fires President Luis Cabral
1984 Zamboanga City mayor Cesar Climaco, a prominent critic of the government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, is assassinated in his home city.
2001 War in Afghanistan: Afghan Northern Alliance fighters takeover the capital Kabul
2017 Armed forces drive through streets of Harare, Zimbabwe a day after military says its prepared to step in after removal of vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa

1959 "Girls against the Boys" closes at Alvin Theater NYC after 16 performances

This seems to imply we'll be at union with both the masculine and the feminine. But all of these events seem to be polar opposites so who knows. It almost seems like women are going to take over and we're trading places. Like Dumuzid and Inanna. If this is the coming of the True Antichrist, then it won't be good and balance will not be achieved through them.

Disasters and Attacks

1775 -15] Floods ravage Dutch coast provinces
1927 World's largest gas tank in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, explodes; 28 die
1938 Dutch DC3 crashes at Schiphol, 6 die
1939 Oil refinery fire kills 500 & destroys Lagunillas, Venezuela
1940 During WW II, German planes destroy most of Coventry, England
1941 British aircraft carrier Ark Royal sank in Mediterranean, having been torpedoed by a German submarine the day before
1941 Governr-General Wouters of Dutch Antilles refuses Jews refuge
1942 -Nov 15th) Japanese/US sea battle at Savo-Island in Guadalcanal
1946 Dutch Dakota flight to Schiphol crashes, kills 11
1959 Kilauea's most spectacular eruption (in Hawaii)
1960 2 passenger trains collided at high-speed killing 110 (Czech)
1960 Riot due to school integration in New Orleans
1970 Marshall U football team wiped out in DC-9 air crash at Kenova, West Virginia, killing 75
1980 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1985 Volcano Nevado del Ruiz Colombia erupts, 1000s killed
1990 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
1990 Great Britain performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1990 Philippines hit by typhoon, 110 die
2016 7.8 earthquake cuts off town of Kaikoura, New Zealand, raising sea bed by 4m, and killing 2 people

Currency Issues

1931 Ottawa Mint Act is proclaimed in Britain
2002 Argentina defaults on an $805 million World Bank payment.
2008 Italy plunges into recession, its first since the start of 2005, after GDP contracts a steeper-than-expected 0.5% in the third quarter
2008 Hong Kong becomes the second Asian economy to tip into recession, its exports hit by weakening global demand
2008 Eurozone officially slips into recession for the first time since its creation in 1999, pushed down by recessions in Germany and Italy
2008 Elizabeth Warren is appointed to chair a Congressional Oversight Panel for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act
2009 The National Statistical Service of Greece states that the country has been in recession since the beginning of the year
2012 A series of protests against austerity measures occur across Europe including Spain, Portugal, and Greece

TV Shows/Movies/Plays/Books

1851 "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville first published by Harper and Brothers in the US
1883 "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson is first published as a book by Cassell & Co.
1894 Start of Sherlock Holmes "Adventure of Golden Pince-Nez" (BG)
1905 David Belasco's "Girl of Golden West" premieres in NYC
1908 Oscar Strauss' musical "Der tapfere Soldat" premieres in Vienna
1945 H Lindsay and R Crouse's "State of the Union" premieres in NYC

"The play's events... allude to Wendell Willkie, the utility company head who became the surprise Republican candidate for president in 1940. 'This is a play about a businessman who is a dark-horse candidate.'

1952 First regular UK singles chart published by the New Musical Express
1960 Ray Charles' "Georgia On My Mind" reaches #1

I said Georgia, GeorgiaA song of you (a song of you)Comes as sweet and clearAs moonlight through the pine

1964 "Fade Out-Fade In" closes at Mark Hellinger NYC after 199 performances

The show spoofs some of the great film stars of the era, such as Shirley Temple and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and Governor is based on MGM honcho Louis B. Mayer, known for his roving eye for pretty starlets and deep-seated nepotism.

1964 "Folies Bergere" closes at Broadway Theater NYC after 191 performances
1964 "Oliver!" closes at Imperial Theater NYC after 774 performances

A workhouse in Dunstable, England is visited by the wealthy governors who fund it. While a sumptuous banquet is held for them, the barefoot orphan boys who work there are being served their daily gruel. They dream of enjoying the same "Food, Glorious Food" as their masters. While eating, some boys draw straws to see who will ask for more to eat, and the job falls to a boy named Oliver Twist. He goes up to Bumble and Widow Corney, who run the workhouse and serve the gruel, and asks for more. Enraged, Bumble takes Oliver to the governors to see what to do with him ("Oliver!"). A decision is made to have Oliver sold into service. Bumble parades Oliver through the snow, trying to sell him to the highest bidder ("Boy for Sale"). Oliver is sold to an undertaker named Mr. Sowerberry, who intends to use him as a mourner for children's funeral

1965 "Baker Street" closes at Broadway Theater NYC after 313 performances
1965 George Abbott Theater (Adelphi, 54 St) at 152 W 54th NYC, demolished
1968 U.S. premiere of film version of Morris L. West's best seller "The Shoes of the Fisherman"
1973 "Good Evening" opens at Plymouth Theater NYC for 438 performances
1976 "Network", directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch and William Holden, premieres in Los Angeles and New York City (Finch - Academy Awards Best Actor 1977)

This one warrants reading the entire plot as it fits too perfectly. Even ending with the assassination of the main character.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(1976_film))
Network is a 1976 American satirical film written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet, about a fictional television network, UBS, and its struggle with poor ratings

1981 "Raise!" 11th studio album by Earth, Wind & Fire is released (Billboard Album of the Year 1982) Event of interestEvent of Interest
1987 "La Cage aux Folles" closes at Palace Theater NYC after 1761 performances

La cage aux folles literally means "the cage of mad women". However, folles is also a slang term for effeminate homosexuals (queens).

1991 Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video premieres on FOX TV
1993 "Kentucky Cycle" opens at Royale Theater NYC for 34 performances
1993 "Twilight of the Golds" closes at Booth Theater NYC after 29 performances
1993 Puerto Rico votes against becoming the 51st US state
1996 "Chicago" opens at Richard Rodgers Theater NYC
1997 Disney's "Lion King" sets Broadway record of $2,700,000 daily sale
2000 Geddy Lee releases his first solo album, “My Favourite Headache”
2002 Film "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" is released, based on the second book by J. K. Rowling
2006 "Casino Royale", 21st James Bond film premieres in London, starring Daniel Craig for the 1st time and Eva Green, premieres in London
2012 "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2", based on the book by Stephenie Meyer, directed by Bill Condon, starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, is released

As ridiculous as this sounds, this might be the most relevant of all. I can't fit it all here, so just go here and read about the plot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Saga:_Breaking_Dawn_%E2%80%93_Part_2#Plot

Her daughters name literally means "born again". Someone gets told they don't live in the world they think they do. Her child get persecuted and they gather "witnesses" to testify for her. The 2 witnesses in Revelation? The correlations here are crazy. Especially with the idea I've heard that everything man exalts, God hates and vice versa. So Pagan and witches seem to be implying something here.

2016 "Moana" animated Disney film directed by Ron Clements and John Musker with voices by Auli'i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson premieres in Los Angeles

On the Polynesian island of Motunui, the inhabitants worship the goddess Te Fiti, who brought life to the ocean, using a pounamu stone as her heart and the source of her power. Maui, the shapeshifting demigod and master of sailing, steals the heart to give humanity the power of creation. However, Te Fiti disintegrates, and Maui is attacked by Te Kā, a volcanic demon, losing both his magical giant fishhook and the heart to the depths.
A millennium later, Moana, daughter of Motunui's chief Tui, is chosen by the ocean to return the heart to Te Fiti. However, Tui arrives and takes Moana away, causing her to lose the heart.

Space & Exploration Related

1524 Francisco Pizarro begins his 1st great expedition, near Colombia
1792 Captain George Vancouver is first Englishman to enter San Francisco Bay

Something to do with Pope Francis? Either Jesuit takeover of America or destruction of the Catholic church would be my guess.

1910 1st airplane flight from deck of a ship, Norfolk, Virginia

Another first involving flying vehicles

1922 BBC begins daily radio broadcasts from the 2LO transmitter at Marconi House

Implying contact

1923 Kentaro Suzuki completes his ascent of Mount Iizuna.

1969 Apollo 12 (Conrad/Gordon/Bean) launched for 2nd manned Moon landing

We just announced we're sending people back to the moon

1981 2nd Space Shuttle Mission-Columbia 2-returns to Earth

The 2nd space shuttle, Lady Liberty, RETURNS to Earth

1983 First cruise missile placed at Greenham Common, England

Those missiles were guided by light

1984 Astronauts aboard "Discovery" pluck a 2nd satellite from orbit

More references to a 2nd moon or "satellite". With "Discovery" plucking one from orbit.

1984 NASA launches NATO-3D

Implying this 3D world was "launched" or created?

1994 Space shuttle STS-66 (Atlantis 13), lands

Atlantis? 13 is the mother again.

2012 CFBDSIR 2149-0403 is discovered, the closest rogue planet to earth (100 light-years away)

This is a giant indicator.

Scandals

1550 Pope Julius III proclaims new seat on Council of Trente

Apparently he was fucking his "adopted nephew" which was a big scandal for the Catholic Church

1943 J Postma, C Schalker, D Goulooze arrested for leading illegal CPN

CPN scams involve social security numbers and escaping bad credit.

1991 American and British authorities announce indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103

Russia downed a flight and I don't think anyone has indicted them yet

1986 SEC imposes a record $100 million penalty against Ivan Boesky

Fined for insider stock trading, the highest fine ever at the time for a single person.

2002 The United States House of Representatives votes not to create an independent commission to investigate the September 11 attacks

Now this is VERY interesting. Trump has repeatedly said he would expose 9/11 and I've had this theory for a while that he would use this information to end the investigation and take complete power.

1976 War criminal Pieter Menten captured 1 day after fleeing

He was a Nazi. A Dutch writer was involved in his capture. I'm noticing a lot of references to the Dutch. Apparently they were very complicit in atrocities of Nazi Germany and they had the highest percentage of Jewish deaths in Western Europe, 75% of them died. A lot of Nazi's actually hid out in these areas to avoid capture. The Little Baron Trump books say he changed his name to a Dutch name. Trump himself lied and said his father was Swedish. I think it's pretty obvious what this means.

Miscellaneous

1666 Samuel Pepys reports on 1st blood transfusion (between dogs)

Almost seems like an illusion to genetic manipulation. The Greeks called the city where they worshiped the Egyptian god of the Underworld Anubis, the "city of the dog". Jesus referred to a Canaanite woman as a dog once. Trump also called Omarosa a "dog". Keeping with my theory that almost 100% of the negative things Trump says about a person are projection, which means he's really talking about himself, this is very interesting. Especially with his love for Black and Gold color schemes on his "Towers" which is very Egyptian. Ramses II also had red hair. Which means he was an Edomite. Ramses II is mentioned specifically on Cleopatra's Needle, one of which is a mile away from the black inverted obelisk that is Trump Tower. Ramses II sounds an AWFUL lot like Trump. Loved to build monuments to himself and over exaggerated his accomplishments. He is very revered though and thought of as a great Pharaoh, according to what was written about him at least.

1675 Pope Clemens X declares Gorcumse martyrs divine

They were 19 Catholics who were killed for being Catholics

1832 First streetcar (horse-drawn) (John Mason) debuts in NYC; fare 12 cents rode on 4th Avenue between Prince and 14th Sts

The Mars Rover was literally just driven around NYC

1896 Power plant at Niagara Falls begins operation

Implying a new power or power source is coming?

1967 The Congress of Colombia in commemoration of the 150 years of the death of Policarpa Salavarrieta, declares this day as "Day of the Colombian Woman"

Columbia was originally a name for the goddess of America, which is essentially Lady Liberty. If the Messiah really is coming, this is implying it's a woman.

1969 2nd Vietnam Moratorium Day in US

This was a sit in to protest the Vietnam war

1972 Dow Jones closes above 1,000 for 1st time (1003.16)

This seems to be a good thing

1973 Canada begins production of Olympic coins

The Olympics was the celebration of the Triumph over the first gods, the Titans. Although its just a sham to fool the people into thinking they are free now when the old gods just changed shape into new ones. Like the Phoenix being reborn.

1975 Spain, Morocco and Mauretania sign accord about Spanish Sahara

Spain gave up land due to pressure from the UN

1976 "Don't Step on My Olive Branch" closes at Playhouse NYC after 16 performances

This is a play about Israel. Olive branches represent peace

1977 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat repeats willingness to visit Israel to Walter Cronkite

Interesting. Egypt is a metaphor in the Bible for a place of struggle as well as being a real place.

1981 Old Dutch Windmill in Golden Gate Park repaired and working again

Apparently this is just one of 2 different ones. The other one called Murphy which is on the west side of the GOLDEN GATE Park.

1982 Polish Solidarity chairman Lech Wałęsa freed

Just gonna have to read about this one for yourselves, it's very relevant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lech_Wa%C5%82%C4%99sa

1990 Michael Heseltine contests Margaret Thatcher's leadership of the British Conservative Party

A challenge to the conservative party

1991 Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk returns to Phnom Penh after thirteen years of exile

13 is associated with the mother principal of the soul. She's been in exile, represented by getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

2001 OPEC announces that it intends to cut its crude oil output quotas by 1.5 million barrels per day effective, but only if non-OPEC producers cut their output by 500,000 barrels per day as well

Oil shortage coming?

2007 the last direct-current distribution by Con Edison was shut down.

Is this indicating the power will be cut off or is it a metaphor for humanity itself?

Children's Day is celebrated on the 14th of November in India as a tribute to Jawaharlal Nehru, who was born on November 14, 1889. Jawaharlal Nehru, who was fondly called Chacha Nehru or simply Chachaji, was known for his love for children. On this day, chocolates and gifts are often distributed among children, while schools organize different events such as debates, and music and dance performances. It is also a common practice to distribute gifts like clothes, toys and books to orphan children on this day.

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Please note that while the Stay-at-Home Order may come to an end for the Niagara Region, travel between regions is still not recommended to stop the spread of COVID-19. Until February 16, 2021, the Stay-at-Home order will continue in Niagara Falls. Get in on the excitement at Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort! Enjoy our 200,000 sq. ft. gaming floor, world-class dining & entertainment, all while overlooking the Falls. Galleria shops and Café Court food outlets are temporarily unavailable. Please stay tuned for further updates. We look forward to welcoming you back soon, in the meantime the following exterior businesses are open for you: Shoeless Joe's, Starbucks, Fallsview Market, and WifiCellular. Niagara Falls is open again now that almost all of Ontario is in Stage 2 of the province's reopening. But before making the hour and a half drive from Toronto to the country's most renowned For this reason, Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino Niagara will not be reopening on Friday, July 24. As the province has announced, casinos are permitted to reopen in stage three, but with Presentation of the Casino Niagara Falls . Welcome to the Casino Niagara in Niagara Falls. This 95,000 square feet of gaming, fun and excitement is waiting for you. The offer of this casino is endless. It feature over 1,300 slot machines on two gaming floors with classic table games such as Poker, roulette, Blackjack, Spanish 21, Casino War. Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino in Niagara Falls was the first to open on June 18. Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino in downtown Buffalo follow on Thursday. Finally, Seneca Allegany Resort & Casino on Niagara Falls State Park is OPEN! Niagara Falls State Park's outdoor restrooms and information booths remain open. The Orin Lehman Visitor Center is open with limited services from 10 AM - 5:30 PM. Niagara Adventure Theater and Observation Tower are closed until further notice. Visit our Facebook page for up to the minute updates. A re-opening date for Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino Niagara has not been confirmed. Niagara Casinos is currently reviewing the re-opening requirements and capacity restrictions and continuing to work with Government and Public Health Officials on our re-opening plans. After the success of the Casino Niagara property, the Fallsview Casino was opened in 2004. Highlights include: 200,000 square feet gaming space; 3000+ slot machines; 100+ gaming tables; Large Poker Room that includes WSOP events

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OPINION: It's time we stop shunning tourism and "outsiders" in this city. Our city is unique and beautiful. This is an asset we aren't using fully. That needs to change.

If You See Graffiti Reading "FOR A GOOD TIME CALL:", follow this "Rule of the Road"...