Victim of Fate

There are many stories of buried treasure that tickle the imagination of modern treasure hunters. The forgotten legend of the gold of Ukrainian Hetman Pavlo Polubotok disappeared into the labyrinths of British banks, the mainstream legends of buried pirate treasures like that of Captain Kidd, the now less annoying Nazis and their fabulous hiding places in the Alps, the mythical gold of the ``White'' contras Kolchak - they all kept company with the legend of General Yamashita's gold.

Due to an unexpected development of events, Tomoyuki Yamashita's gold has left the realm of legends and become a completely real fact and now stands lonely and sad, without its former friends who kept it company in the imaginary world. The slightly pathetic introduction aside, it was about the wealth that the maniacal Japanese hordes during the Second World War, and even before that - in the capacity of Termites - stole from all over Asia, according to the plan developed by the brother of Emperor Hirohito (something.....Hito) which practically meant that everything of value should be collected from the occupied territories and for the practical realization was appointed General Yamashita, a veteran of the genocidal actions of the Japanese `Kwantung` Army in China.

Like their equivalents from the insect world - the Japanese armies also fed the `Queen` with the plundered wealth. The myths about the Japanese honest warriors, heirs of the Bushido standards of behavior and warfare appeared later, in California. The Chinese, Korean and Filipino people had known this for a long time...

They stole what they stole and took it all to the Philippines, where they sorted and packaged it, melting down the gold and silver bars to erase the seals of the various original owners. They took the cargo to the port, loaded it onto ships and submarines and headed for Nippon. Probably deluded in their confidence due to their initial successes, they did not expect that the Americans would break through the Philippine Islands so quickly, with part of the massive wealth remaining untransported to Japan. Therefore, Yamashita ordered 175 underground storage facilities to be dug where all this would be buried, in anticipation of a counteroffensive, defeat of the Americans, God's wind... better times in any case.

Naturally, the workers who worked as slaves on the tunnels in which the treasure was buried were liquidated after the work was completed, a pragmatic procedure to prevent information from leaking out, although Sadism also played a role in all of this, as in the best Bushido custom. The locations were written down in code on paper and taken to Japan. Yamashita was captured by the Yankees, convicted as a war criminal and hanged, having taken the secret of the treasure to his grave. Or at least that's what was believed...About 20 years later, some poor guy from the Philippines named Rogelio Rojas, obsessed with the talk of the supposed treasure buried by the Japanese in his area, after much suffering, saving, and strenuous searches - came across one of the coded maps, apparently not all of them were transferred to Japan or someone made copies, in case patriotism wasn't hot enough after the war.

Rojas also found a relative who knew Japanese, they translated the map, deciphered it, and the poor guy gathered everything he had and everything he didn't have, and hired a few souls to dig together in the tunnel he found. After several months of digging and hard work... it turned out that the treasure was not supposed to be, but completely real! It was one of 175 secret caches. About 240 gold bars, silver, works of art, a golden Buddha stolen from Burma, jewelry...Rojas clearly had no respect for the religious relic because he turned the head of the Buddha... and for that unexpected effort he was rewarded with two handfuls of uncut diamonds that were hidden inside the pseudo-divine statue.

The poor guy becomes a billionaire...

And then a nasty, disgusting, worthless, ugly, insidious, whoreish plot twist comes into play. Disgusting, worthless, ugly, faggot, nasty, horrible, evil...did I mention nasty?!

Namely, the dictator of the Philippines at that time, a kleptocratic jackass who went by the name of Marcos - was also searching for the treasure, he had hired teams of archaeologists but all of it - in vain. Did one of the diggers brag drunk somewhere, did someone see the golden Buddha and the seven ingots they were carrying to sell or something else - Marcos found out about the event and sent the secret police to find poor Rogelio, they found him and arrested him, beat him, burned him with cigarettes, connected electrodes to his genitals...he saw it or not, Rojas told them where the treasure was and signed that he donated it to...the state. And the state was Marcos.

Later, various traumas followed, he was put in prison where he stayed for several years, he escaped but was caught and returned to prison, he was later released but he was not sure that he would survive until the fall of Marcos and the regime in 1986. His wife left him with the children, he couldn't see a thing from the beating, his hands were shaking, the poor guy didn't have a penny, even though he had everything for a short time. He managed to find a lawyer who agreed to file a lawsuit in Hawaii (where the fugitive dictator lived comfortably), the process dragged on and only in 1996 was a verdict issued to return his wealth along with the largest damages in the world's judicial history of 40 billion dollars, but in vain, the wealth had long since been transferred to accounts in Swiss and Cayman oases...

In vain and because Rojas did not wait for the court's decision, he died of a stroke in 1993, no doubt due to the consequences of the tragic events that happened to him. A terribly depressing story about a poor man, who would have been befitting a portrait by a new Theodore Gericault, the only one who could capture the tragedy of a dark fate. A tragedy resulting from so much pain and effort, saving, cutting back on daily bread, success in finding a treasure that few even believed existed, without deceiving or hurting anyone... so that in the end, instead of enjoying the fruits of his labor and fanatical perseverance - Rojas ends up a ruin, abandoned by everyone, sitting alone in front of his house, probably unable to understand and unwilling to surrender to the disgusting twists of fate.

If there was ever a need to invent a concept opposite to a happy ending, then it was in this case. There are still 174 tunnels, 174 lures for adventurers from all over the world, 174 potential tragedies...

(Roger Mortis, 075)

The White Rose

The seas and oceans do not have an exclusive contract with the universe for mysterious events, but rivers and lakes also hide their secrets. Okay, some lakes like Lake Michigan are the size of an ocean, so shipwrecks are not a rare occurrence.

But some shipwrecks are still unique for many reasons. In 1875, the schooner Rosa Belle with 10 people on board capsized for unknown reasons. After some time, the capsized ship, retaining some buoyancy, was thrown by the winds and currents right into the harbor of Grand Haven, a grotesque situation when the ship appeared on its own at the dock (!?). But there was no trace of the ten passengers and crew members and their fate was never clarified.

And all of that would have been just another tragic mysterious episode, a footnote in local history if the ship hadn't been preserved long enough to make it worth repairing and renovating. And if a cult hadn't gotten involved...After they renovated it, the ship had been in service for almost half a century. In 1921, it was chartered by the House of David sect, a Russian cult known for its progressive views, orgy affairs, founding a godly baseball club, building its own town, and requiring all men to wear beards.

And when a Russian cult boards a ship with the word Rose in its name, even White, nothing good can come of it.

In the fall of 1921, the ship again appeared on its own in a harbor, this time Ann Arbor, again capsized and again without any of the people on board, in this case without the 11 sectarians who had chartered the schooner. The sectarians suffered the same fate as the unfortunate ones of 1875, disappearing without a trace for all time and eternal memory. The reasons for the capsizing were not known. The weather and conditions were quite good, although the ship after its appearance was slightly damaged, the cabin with the steering wheel was almost destroyed and there was a hole in the hull above the waterline. This led to the conclusion that it was a collision, but no ship reported such a thing and no witnesses ever appeared to witness such an event, nor was there any word about repairing the damaged ship that could have possibly participated in the collision.

It was never determined which mysterious ship hit the Rosa Belle. Or maybe it was the Ascension, a long-awaited religious event by the better-informed Russians when the righteous souls would be taken directly to heaven while the wicked would remain on earth...Regardless of the capsizing, as the crowning of the bizarre, the ship in both cases remained above water and in both cases no one was saved and not only that but everyone completely disappeared without a trace.

After this incident, rumors began to circulate that the ship was taking victims at a certain time, as if it had a mind of its own and one of the theories later was that the passengers from 1875 entered a time hole, appeared in 1921, rented an old dilapidated ship, waited for the Rosa Belle to sail to the same place where they disappeared (and indeed the capsizings occurred almost in the identical place) - and at full speed crashed into their former-present enemy ship. Or was it a future one?

Time paradoxes have always given me headaches, so I'm not sure the latter theory makes any sense. After the second incident, it was decided not to risk the Beautiful Rose again, the ship was dismantled just in case and ended up as a source of firewood, sending the final symbolism of the hellish fires where it may have sent the sectarians for their heresy, orgies, and sectarianism.

(Roger Mortis, 074)

Elderly Dynamics

In the miserable misfortunes known as Balkan societies, the cult of respect for the elderly is omnipresent. Perhaps less so today than ever, at least judging by the chatter of elderly people who complain that there is no more respect for the elderly, the young are described as more furious, uncultured, evil and unfamiliar with the default value of old age.

I believe that every generation from the time of  Biblical Noah and even earlier from the Anunnaki to the present has complained that the younger generations are ``stupid`` and that in ``their time`` there was order, respect and discipline. The classic generation gap, the malice of elderly characters who are jealous of someone else's youth or just good old whining? There is a whole arsenal of proverbs and sayings about the supposed wisdom of the elderly, it is sung in folk songs and stories, myths and legends are full of ``aging`` qualities. Adolescence and childhood as concepts are relatively recent, given the shift in age boundaries compared to the past as a result of increased life expectancy. Childhood was invented by Charles Dickens in 1844.

Just as `old age` no longer begins at 40 as it once did (and somewhat earlier for women) but much later, perceptions are changing as well. Truth be told, there is a counterweight to this cult, and that is the cult of youth/children, but that is another topic...

What are the qualities that are worthy of respect in senior citizens?

Why should the elderly be privileged over others?

Are the elderly perhaps considered `keepers` of tradition?

First of all, the question should be asked whether there are any 'young' people in these parts because the young have an old-fashioned way of thinking, they inherited cowardice from the old who still nurse the new generations with fear and humility, every power is sacred to them, every authority is absolute. The exterior expressed in a 25-year-old body only conceals the 96-year-old perception of the creature that is hidden inside that garment. His or her fingers may be fast on a keyboard or a touch-screen, they may have sex incomparably more than their pitiful predecessors and they may be extremely liberal in terms of soft drugs, gambling and alcohol. They watch different movies and listen to different music than their parents, grandparents and other animals - but these are those insignificant, skin deep differences because the clothes and the hairstyle and the music and Twitter - come from the outside world into the empty head of the young person. What they emanate from themselves around them is the same morbid stupidity and total lack of social awareness about any matter that will be crucial in their lives and in the lives of their future offspring...Therefore, do not scratch below the surface if you do not want to see rot.

The generation gap is not something big in the Balkans, it never has been, except for the technology that separates them - the other aspects are very similar or completely identical, so if we take the life fundamentals of a 19-year-old and an 80-year-old, it will be determined that they think according to identical patterns and have a noticeable absence of social awareness. If we go into the more distant past and notice what folk proverbs and wisdom have been preserved through the centuries, we will reach the glorification of stupidity, fear, obedience, spinelessness and sycophancy. The deception is that each generation probably prolongs the myth of old wisdom in order to give itself a false value and in time to poison the well from which the younger ones will drink tomorrow.

The `wise` generations sold the future of today's generation for 150 euros per month. Today's generation sells the future of the next one for 200 euros. And a sandwich at a rally, of course. And that cycle seems never to end. The only hope is the catastrophic birth rate, emigration and growing mortality. Here, a few Kilotons or a suitable biological agent, strategically dispersed over the peninsula, would help...Although generalization is a sword with at least two edges, sometimes it imposes itself with regard to current situations. It is not an attack on specific individuals or their grandparents to whom they are attached and do not like such a generalization. The conversation is about the values ​​that are passed down generationally and whether/how much they are worth.

And they are worth almost nothing.

What`s more, if you go back centuries - the peninsula was a miserable place to live, a perpetuation of shit, never an inch away from a bare struggle for existence and survival. A bowed head flies and is not eaten. An interesting coincidence, at the height of the period with the highest standard of living of the population in the history of these regions, during the so-called ``Ante Marković period``, the people apparently found themselves in an unrecognizable situation of being outside the struggle for bare life and completely shocked and confused, instead of following the consolidation of that beginning - a bloody orgy of evil followed spread over a decade of wars, hunger, diseases, unprecedented theft and corruption.

In the past, there was no class in these regions that was outside the struggle for bare survival, and today there is such a small insignificant group of political-criminal origin whose survival requires the suffering of the majority of the population. And that is the worst possible option...The centuries-old struggle for survival without the ability to raise one's head even slightly above the threshold of the shit that threatens to enter the mouth of the individual at any moment, to take a breath in order to do something more significant than survival - is at the root of the curse of many meridians, including the poor peninsula, condemned to thrive on a diet of delusions and slavery.

The answers to the questions posed are self-evident. There are almost no qualities that are worthy of respect in senior citizens. Elderly people should not have any privileges in relation to others. The traditions that are ``preserved`` by the elderly are a cheap mythomania worse than a random invention of a five-year-old child. The semblance of a possible decent life here depends proportionally on how much one will part ways with those ``values`` once and for all. It is probably already too late for that and one is just waiting for the curtain to fall, an act that is never pleasant to watch but is the logical result of centuries and centuries of morbid stupidity.

(Roger Mortis, 073)

Trodmore

One fine day in August 1898 (it is not known whether the day was fine, but in any case it is a nice way to start a text) an elegantly dressed guy with perfect manners entered the editorial office of the then most famous British sports newspaper `The Sportsman` and introduced himself as Mr. Martin and his purpose was to report the holding of a new horse race in Trodmore, a small town in Cornwall. He had with him a flawlessly printed race program, cards with the characteristics of the jockeys and horses and a confirmation from the municipality of Trodmore for the upcoming event, so everything is in order. He duly paid for advertising the race and left.

Since the times were Victorian and no one doubted the word of rich gentlemen, the newspaper announced the race and so far there was nothing strange. Bookmakers at that time were informed by newspapers and by telegraph in an attempt to compile betting odds, and so this time they compiled a `bulletin` that also included the race at Trodmore. The best odds were a horse with a ratio of 1/5, which means that if that horse won, for every pound invested, five were returned. And so one fine day, just before the start of the race, another fine, gallant gentleman appeared who placed some 2,000 pounds on the favorite horse.

The day of the race came and later Mr. Martin appeared in the newspaper's editorial office again, to bring the results, the winner was the horse that we have already mentioned. The other fine gentleman, the one who had paid at the bookmakers (the bookmaker's office of...), went to the bookmaker's office with a copy of the newspaper (as proof of the results), naturally withdrew 10,000 pounds and left. Later, other characters appeared with smaller amounts, but the bookmaker's window stated that the odds were 2/5, i.e. two pounds equals five, probably an unintentional mistake. This caused confusion and the bookmakers called the Sportsman's editorial office to check the odds. They were told it was 1/5, but just in case, they decided to call Trodmore and check on the spot.

The problem was that Trodmore did not exist, much less was there a horse race in the non-existent town...

One can only imagine the expressions on the editor's and the bookmaker's faces when they found out. A sportsman was hit by a scandal for publishing fictitious races and the bookmaker was left short by 10,000 pounds, I am very much out of luck at that time if you know that a worker earned about 50 pounds a year. Mr. `Martin` and the character who paid and collected the payment...needless to say, were never seen again, they left relatively rich and were never caught, not only that but no one got a clue about their identity. No weapons, no violence, no hatred - they just used the style over substance situation that reigned in the psyche of the then paradise.

A little later another group of betting enthusiasts flew into the prism of public interest. That event was the stand-off between the players and the management of Manchester United and Liverpool in 1915, when United had to win in the last round to avoid being relegated from the league and Liverpool was safe in the middle and so they agreed on a 2-0 victory for United. At that time, those clubs were not particularly hostile towards each other as they were later, which left room for such `cooperation`. The match was crap, Liverpool behaved as if it was their first time playing football, there was even a penalty for them but they missed it with a shot three meters above the goal and all that was enough to raise suspicions with the Football Association.

Perhaps all of this would have gone unpunished if certain nice gentlemen had not paid a heavy sum on the correct score 2-0 for United, with odds of 1/7 and walked away with a good sum - that was already a sign of alarm and in a short time the F.A. in cooperation with Scotland Yard, they uncovered the fraud, three Manchester United players and four Liverpool players were suspended for life from playing football and never played again, the remaining players, coaches and management received suspended sentences, the clubs escaped without points being deducted, they were `lucky` because it was the last match before the league was suspended due to the Great War, and thus they continued in the First League after the war, albeit with a larger double-red stain on the club's honor...

(Roger Mortis, 072)

The Good Citizen

The railway has always been a target of armed robberies, the names of famous criminals from the Wild West like Butch Cassidy and Jesse James or Bruce Reynolds and Ronnie Biggs from the `heist of the century` in Britain are almost household names and their fame seems not to fade but to be prolonged with each new film, documentary or book dedicated to them.

In all that colorful gallery of characters, one stands out who, with his self-awareness and anonymity, is like a black sheep in the robber community, primarily because of his double life and pronounced Robin Hood complex, and probably also because of his ideological motivation. In December 1946, an unforgettable robbery took place on the railway line between Troyes and Chaumont in France, in which a single masked man appeared with a gun in front of the shocked guards of the postal car of train no. 426 and addressed them with the words - ``Don't be afraid, just calm down, I need the money looted from the state and nothing more.'' He left with 2.5 million Francs, today's equivalent to some 7.5 million euros. And that would have been nothing special or significant if after a few weeks all over France about 500 people had not received a small parcel with 4,500 Francs (13,500 euros) - which came as a gift from heaven...

This event would be the first in a series of similar ones in the next seven years, behind which stood Barthélemy Varze, at first glance a pious and modest guy, a good and conscientious citizen and a family man who did not stand out in any way from the environment in which he lived. Except perhaps for his penchant for good food and good wine, with an emphasis on canned chicken, a specialty of a single factory in France...The only thing that, if I may say so, 'stood out' about Varze was the fact that he had never voted in elections, local, regional or national, and when asked why he did not vote, he would answer - 'I have never voted because I do not agree with the system. I do not want to know anything about a state that is wasting billions of francs while thousands of children are suffering in dire poverty.'

For some, this might have been a sign of alarm, but the good people of Montribourg were not particularly perceptive anyway...The next robbery took place on March 23, 1948 on the Périgueux-Brive line, where the train was transporting municipal money, 250,000 francs (or 750,000 today's euros). A copy of the first attack - this one also went off without a hitch. The third attack was on December 1 of the same year on the Rodez-Severac line and the loot was 100,000 francs.

The police began to suspect an organized group that was `serially` robbing trains, and the events began to become a topic of conversation among the local population. Barthélemy had come to terms with the double identity to such an extent that in conversations with his friends he complained about the police's inability to deal with such impudent robbers! The railways began to hire armed guards, a fact that did not prevent the next (fourth) attack - at the Longre railway station in February 1950. This time the situation turned out to be tense, the guard did not listen to Varze, who ordered him to hand over his weapon at gunpoint - but hit Varze with his fist and tried to take the revolver out of its holster. Varze did not hesitate, fired three bullets, one of which was fatal for the guard because it hit him in the head full of empty heroism at the expense of the state. The loot was 3,086,000 francs, which would remain a record single sum `expropriated` by Varze. The mystery of the money shipments arriving at addresses of the poor was enough for the police to suspect a large and well-organized group. Whether Barthelemy acted alone or had helpers, whether he had 'greased' employees at the post office and in general how the money reached the people has never become clear...The fifth action, in February 1951, a train on the Paris-Dijon line in which the guards were obedient and the bags were full of 1,120,000 francs - was a turning point in the investigation because the efforts of the police through their informants and informants in the underground to find out anything - were in vain - leading to the conclusion that it was a Lone Wolf or a small group, a renegade Robin Hood character who probably had no record or any problems with the 'law' before. Plainclothes cops began to nap at various train stations and travel by train, armed and ready in case the unknown benefactor appeared from somewhere.

However, the public expected results and the promotions were superior and therefore without any special evidence - two petty criminals were arrested and charged with the robberies and murder of the station guard in Longre. Varze, in accordance with his convictions, did not want to let innocent people suffer because of him and therefore sent a letter to the court in which he listed the serial numbers of the bags of cash as proof that the anonymous letter was indeed from the real perpetrator. The judicial authorities were slow in their reaction and after several months the wrongly suspected were still in custody, which prompted Barthélemy to send another letter - this time with two bullets inside addressed to Judge Le Pen, which stated that in case the suspects were not released - the same bullets would end up in the judge's head...

After the release of the two ``scapegoats'', Varze went into hiding for some time. An anecdote from that period best describes the character of Varze, namely, in winter time, he got stuck in the snow with his car, when a peasant came across him with a horse-drawn cart. When asked to be pulled out, the peasant hired the horses that pulled Varze's car out of the snow. In addition to the verbal gratitude, 1,500 francs that he had with him (4,500 euros) were added as a reward for the shocked peasant...

On September 12, 1952, Varze set off on another 'hike', this time on the Saint-Étienne-Clermont-Ferrand line. He returned home with 585,000 francs and the idea of ​​writing a book about his life, actions and views on life, since he was aware that the undertaking would not last forever...April 10, 1953, attack on the Le Mans-Tours line with 270,000 francs taken from the state. On October 23 of the same year, Barthélemy Varze's last attack, the station in Gisées, targeted 350,000 francs, but this time the money was protected by several armed guards joined by several plainclothes police officers. Varze arrived at the station as an ordinary passenger, with a paid ticket and a bag, and planned to escape in a seized vehicle. The situation escalated quickly, a shootout began in which two guards were wounded, which allowed Varze to escape despite the hail of bullets with the help of a seized car - but this time he left behind a bag containing one of his favorite cans that were produced in only one factory...

This clue was enough for the not-so-bright investigators who were working on the case. On November 21, 1953, the police surrounded Varze's house in Montribourg. Varze had enough weapons to try to break in, but the fact that his wife and several relatives were in the house and would be in mortal danger if shooting began - he decided to surrender peacefully. A few days later, the police, guided by their innate genius - arrested Varze's wife because they believed that it was impossible for her to have known nothing about her husband's actions. She was later sentenced to five years in prison, although the fact remained that she was not familiar with her husband's secret life - like no one else in the world...

Inspector Tagan, who was assigned to interrogate Varze, described the subject surprisingly accurately...`People want to believe that he is crazy. Personally, I am firmly convinced that he is not crazy at all, on the contrary, he is an exceptionally smart and impudent man. A man who lived a double life in all areas, a contradictory and conflicted personality, uneducated yet writing books, serving double military service yet being a fierce anti-militarist, seemingly a fanatical Catholic - but in fact a fanatical Anarchist, a man who cared for everyone, who distributed money to poor widows and sick children, a man who left crumbs every day for the birds that landed in his yard - and who did not hesitate to shoot a human being when he was in trouble. I cannot agree with the claims of some who say that Varze is just an ordinary criminal because he is more like a literary character who escaped from the pages of a book.

Barthélémy Varze, the guy who robbed and gave away over 8 million francs (24+ million euros) - was found dead in his cell in January 1954. The man who changed thousands of destinies for the better (or at least tried to) and who never stole private property, only `state` money - voluntarily went into the abyss of anonymity as an anomaly that must not exist in such a world, a ray of light that revealed too much in the field of view of a paradise accustomed to narrow band vision...

(Roger Mortis, 071)

Catcher in the Rye

Catcher in the Rye by Salinger is a rather original book, about a teenage anti-hero named Holden Caulfield, an occasional soft drug user and a socially awkward, slightly irritating character...What makes the book influential outside of libraries and home shelves are the theories that some sentences in the book were inserted with murderous intent.

During the arrest of Mark Chapman (John Lennon's killer), this book was found on him, which he was carrying with him during the murder and which he had bought a few hours before he killed Lennon, and there was even a scribbled note in the book that he was planning to do some shit, all signed `Holden Caulfield` and it was rumored that the guy was heard saying `Catcher in the Rye says John Lennon must die`...The alleged killer of Robert Kennedy (Sirhan Sirhan) also owned a copy of this book, as did the alleged executioner of Martin Luther King (James Earl Ray). John Hinckley, who almost assassinated the senile American President Reagan (he managed to shoot him in the chest but narrowly missed his heart), also read The Catcher in the Rye shortly before the assassination...

According to some theories, Salinger (himself a highly mysterious figure) was part of a team that worked on psy-ops, various mind control projects and the creation of "Manchurian Candidates", assassins who are programmed to kill a specific target but that target is communicated to them indirectly along with the order for action - by reading a book that contains commands that serve as a trigger for the program implanted in the assassin's mind. In this way, "undesirable" individuals can be eliminated without any risk that the orderers will be discovered in any way, there is no link that can be proven between the parties involved.

The book was published in the same year (1951) when the first CIA brainwashing program began (Project Artichoke, which would later be followed by the infamous Project MK-Ultra). Salinger led an extremely reclusive life, far from the media and even cut off contact with friends and relatives completely. For a long time, it was speculated that such an author did not exist, others claimed that he had been liquidated and still others that he lived on a mountain. However, Salinger was alive and passed away in 2010 at the age of 91, taking the secrets of his most famous work ``The Catcher in the Rye'' with him to his grave.

If you've read the book and have strange thoughts...it's not your fault, it's the book! And if you're reading it right now and you start muttering or scribbling around `Catcher in the Rye says the neighbor/random character who annoys you must die`, stop reading immediately Personally, I read it translated into Serbian-Croatian and didn't notice a surge of homicidal thoughts in my head, I guess the code is only activated in the original English...

(Roger Mortis, 070)

Many Moons ago

The village in the French region of Gévaudan, located between the Loire River and the Marguerite Mountains during the rotten `Ancient regime` (the kingdom of the Bourbons) was recovering from a plague epidemic, the population began to increase again, the wounds were healing... when an infestation of robbers began, characters who stole from the rich but did not think of giving to the poor, on the contrary, they stole from them too, taxes again weighed heavily on the backs of the poor peasants and because their life was too `fun`, fate decided to send them a famine that lasted for several years. And just when the village thought that it could not be worse, a Werewolf appeared!

Maybe not the kind of movie one, who turns into beasts with screams on a full moon and who belong to fantasy - but a completely real danger that will take an unknown number of lives. The suffering of the people began in June 1764 when something resembling a wolf but much larger and with a tendency to stand on two legs attacked a girl who was guarding a herd of oxen (in the `good old days` young girls guarded oxen). Fortunately for the girl, the bloodthirsty creature only wounded her because unexpectedly several oxen launched a counterattack and chased the creature away, unlike the guard dogs who ran away, squealing...

The girl's statements about a huge wolf-like creature were ridiculed by the villagers who considered it an illusion resulting from fear and panic. It didn't take long for the bloody confirmation of the girl's words to be confirmed, the same creature attacked, strangled and partially ate the `colleague` of the girl who had survived the first attack - a few days later. In the next few months, a reign of fear and horror began, lone travelers on the foggy roads of Gévodane, travelers on forest paths, shepherds and other herders, children who played a little further away than usual and whose blood ran cold before the ominous howling of the creature that emerged from the morning mist with a demonic gleam in its eyes - only to pounce and strangle its victims - that was the sad `pattern` according to which in the next three years at least 113 and at most 310 people would go to the other world, estimates varied as the collection of information at the time varied...

The people gathered in churches to pray for deliverance from the torment and their prayer was often interrupted by the howling of the beast in the distance, a harbinger of new death, fear and unrest in the area. In addition to prayer, the people also grabbed a rifle, a pitchfork, an axe - whatever you can get your hands on, and groups were formed to find and kill the "perpetrator". Wolves were killed en masse, some of them quite large - but in vain, each killed wolf gave false hope that the danger had been eliminated, only to have someone's grave dug again the next day...

The following year, word of the events reached King Louis XV, who financed a special group of "specialists", more precisely experienced hunters gathered from all over France who were supposed to solve the problem. They also killed wolves en masse, but in vain. Only once did they come into contact with the alleged Werewolf, when they managed to inflict a wound on him, although several of the elite hunters also suffered serious injuries. The attacks continued until June 1767 when a local hunter named Jean Chastel, an accurate marksman, risking his life finally managed to shoot the creature with a silver bullet (!?). Finally, the torment ended, but not the mystery. The huge and bizarre corpse of something that resembled a hybrid between a huge wolf and a Mastiff was taken to Paris, the hunter was rewarded and money was charged to view the corpse. Proposals to taxidermy the miracle were late, summer time and high temperatures - the corpse decomposed and was buried, unfortunately.

No one was able to determine what it was. Wolf attacks on humans are rare, but the creature was not a wolf anyway. The speed and number of attacks were also impossible for a wolf and the territory that the beast `covered` in search of victims was incredible. The silver bullet used in the killing gave rise to theories that it was a Werewolf. Some claimed that he had "ordained" a specific type of maniac, a phenomenon that would later become known as the "serial killer" - camouflaged in fur, and the hybrid animal only served to distract attention and sow fear, in an unusual capacity as an apprentice-pet-killer.

The creature became known as the "Beast of Gevaudan" and continued to live in the legends and collective consciousness of the area for a long time. To this day, it is not known exactly what it was about, but if he was really a serial killer and stopped killing after the death of his "pet" then he would be one of the greatest maniacs ever, with at least 113 murders behind him - which makes Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac, the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, Jack the Stripper, Bible John and the New Orleans Axeman - total amateurs in the realm of sadism. Their common trait is that they have remained undiscovered and legendary figures in the world of evil...

(Roger Mortis, 069)

The Black Rose

There is hardly a person under 50 who has not heard of the most famous sect of the ex-Yugoslavia (and beyond), the mythical Black Rose, an alleged Satanic secret organization that engages in a wide range of activities - from ritual suicides to desecration of cemeteries, from animal sacrifices to listening to Punk Rock and Death Metal, drug use and orgies - and all in the glory of the Evil One who is hungry for the fragile and innocent souls of teenagers.

Non-existent but omnipresent, when it comes to Black Rose, it is always about `knowing` about sectarian activities at first hand, a friend of the mother-in-law of the neighbor's wedding party told how a high school student got lost somewhere after a long-term experience in Black Rose...However, all roads to the beginnings of this cult-status Cult lead to Zagreb. There are several versions of the emergence of the elusive sect, and they are all fascinating in their own way.

One version is that the most distant trace of the term Crna Ruža (Black Rose) led to a café of the same name in Zagreb, sometime around the time Tito died, and at that time there was an infestation of metalheads, punks, and other sectarians who, dressed shockingly and scandalously, frequented the Crna Ruža café, a name that later became a symbol of blackness, cemeteries, listening to opaque vinyl records, and yellow candles. The moral citizenry was disturbed by such a place where their children gathered and sold their souls to the devil en masse. It was allegedly located in a basement room (logically, underground, closer to Hades)...The fate of the catering facility that bore that name is unknown; some claimed that it collapsed during the `Homeland War`, and some that the cult café was eaten up by the transition... at least that is one of the theories about the origin of the sect.

Another version talks about a heavy metal band called Crna Ruža, formed in the late seventies and early eighties in Zagreb and fronted by Nancy, a young female vocalist. The media at that time created an umbrella term for all new manifestations of anti-social behavior coming from the rotten West (Punk, Metal, New Wave, Post Punk, Hard Rock) at that time. That term was ``Darkers'', probably because of the black color that prevailed in the dress code of the fans of the aforementioned trends. The band and Nancy had limited success with gigs in second-rate clubs and allegedly later, under the burden of unfulfilled dreams, drugs, alcohol and sex - Nancy committed suicide by jumping from the eighth floor, which gave rise to the legend of the suicidal norm that the members of Crna Ruža had to fulfill. The Black Rose was promoted from a metal band into a sect through the media of the time and the rest is history...

A third version is that of the UDBA, a ubiquitous and unfortunately existing organization that, in an attempt to preserve the tradition of socialist self-government of the working class of Yugoslavia from the constant threats of Western influence, invented the story and through its media exponents placed it among the public. All this was helped by Nancy's suicide, which was used to create the suicide myth. A fourth variant tells of the famous adventurer and host of a dubious talk show, Željko Malnar, who was allegedly the founder of the Black Rose. Željko was the owner of a cafe (or pub!?) where alternative youth gathered, whom he recruited for membership in the Black Rose. One of the members was Nancy, who in this version was not a band singer but just a metalhead, the daughter of a high-ranking JNA officer who, in his socialist realist rigidity, forbade his daughter from associating with dubious characters and listening to bad music.

Since the teenager was stubborn, smoked, drank, had a bunch of aces on her head (and maybe lice) - the officer decided on a dramatic step - he locked Nancy in the apartment. After some time, Nancy, closed and isolated, went crazy, as they say, and threw herself from the eighth floor. Radio Rumor was the main news broadcaster at the time, so in the Zagreb area, the hysteria around Crna Ruža reached its peak after Nancy's suicide when a furious crowd of worried believers noticed a priest dressed in a black robe coming out of  a car. Who knows why, that situation seemed to them to be somehow `sectarian` and the people beat up the priest, thinking he was `Darker`...and he was neither guilty nor obliged, he was just wearing a black priest's uniform! This was not the only attack on an employee in the church ranks, and there were similar attacks on other people who wore black clothing...

The fifth clue leads to Zagreb Satanist and `Nepo baby` Aleksandar Miles, a red-bourgeois kid who is known for organizing the theft of thousands of rare books from the National University Library in Zagreb, worth millions of marks at the time, which were later smuggled and sold to private collections in Austria and Germany. It is said that the Black Rose was a criminal, not a religious, organization that Miles founded and developed as a network for the theft and smuggling of rare books, although over time the group reoriented itself to other lucrative fields, such as drug trafficking, for example. Miles was arrested in 1988 and sentenced to fifteen years in prison along with part of the group. After a failed escape attempt in which Miles even managed to take a cop hostage, the Satanist fell into depression and committed suicide in 1994. The group allegedly survived after the death of its leader and even developed into a significant factor in the criminal underworld in the Balkans, and the murders disguised as suicides during criminal encounters, together with the Satanism of the perpetrator, were the reason for the birth of the media story about a sect called the Black Rose...

The six hundred and sixty-sixth version accuses the church of being the organizer of the Black Rose myth. In an attempt to scare the flock and return the youth to the right path, a group of Catholic priests hired several godly journalists to publish stories about the presence of the devil on the streets of Zagreb and beyond, hoping that the youth would be horrified by the wave of alleged suicides caused by the unbridled lifestyle and general immorality, and their parents would have a new `Baba Roga` with which will scare their children. Later, these stories, following the principle of `broken telephone`, spread throughout all ex-Yu countries, where they are still present in the printed media and internet portals. That the road to hell is not paved with black roses but with good intentions is best evidenced by the fact that today almost every suicide of a person under 30 years of age in any of the ex-Yu countries must be associated with a Black Rose in at least one media outlet, a testament to the durability of mass hallucination, to the need for a hidden enemy lurking in the darkness and who, although diabolical - will take upon himself all the parental and systemic sins that led a young person to take his own life...

(Roger Mortis, 068)

Dream Holiday

What's wrong with a guy taking his girlfriend on a romantic Christmas vacation?

Nothing special, unless the guy suddenly starts showing signs of absent-mindedness, lost in the distance, and insisting on an undefined, fixed idea. Peter Gibbs, a musician and occasional pilot, landed his girlfriend in a rented Cessna-150 on the hotel runway (there was such a thing) in Glenforsa, on the island of Mull in northern Scotland. It would seem like the beginning of a dream vacation for the couple in love... and that's how it was until Christmas dinner on 24/25.12.1975. The two had a few glasses of wine and were probably about to head to the hotel room to indulge in carnal pleasures - when suddenly... Peter started saying that he had to take off right then and there, alone, right away, without delay!

His girlfriend, expectedly shocked and surprised by his insistence on flying, received no answer, Peter seemed a little confused and absent-minded and answered all her questions with vague phrases that boiled down to the fact that he had to take off immediately. The girl found herself in a dilemma but still decided to do what Peter asked of her, i.e. to help him take off. It was approaching midnight, it was pitch black outside and there was also fog. With a flashlight in her hands, the girl headed to the end of the runway to signal where it ended and how far her boyfriend had to separate from the runway with the plane. Perhaps the fact that Peter was an ex-RAF pilot and had quite a bit of experience with planes gave her some kind of security.

Peter successfully took off...aaaaaaaaaand was not seen again...at least not alive.

After takeoff - he completely disappeared. An alarm was raised, the police and the coast guard searched for him along with other citizens who joined the search...completely unsuccessfully.

And again, suddenly, in early April 1976, there was Peter! But unfortunately, only as a corpse, about three kilometers from the hotel where he was staying with his wife, with no signs of violence except for a minor injury to his leg. And the plane... The Cessna remained missing even though the corpse appeared in a place that had already been searched. The corpse was unusually fresh and without signs of decomposition consistent with three months of being outdoors.

The pathologists reported that death occurred due to frostbite and not as a result of a fall from a height.

Various theories have emerged around this case.

Naturally, the banal explanation of infidelity and an attempt to leave his wife was expected, but Peter did not receive a phone call nor was it ever established that he was cheating, on the other hand, such a dramatic `breakup` is borderline crazy and difficult to imagine and besides, it does not explain anything about the death and the disappearance of the plane. Another theory mentioned that Peter was a spy for MI-5 and was supposed to go on a mission to Northern Ireland where there was a civil war at the time, he was killed there and then the body was returned near the hotel (!?). Quite incredible if you take into account that there are a bunch of ways to deal with a corpse more easily. Besides... where is the Cessna?Eleven years later, in one of the bays of the island of Mal, a few kilometers from the runway but in the opposite direction from where the body was found, the remains of a small plane were discovered, which some assumed was a Cessna, although the plane had obviously hit the water at high speed, causing many of the remains to be scattered around, indicating that it was not a forced landing that would have left the plane to sink as a whole.

The cabin was found, and in it, comfortably nestled, stood a lobster... and legend has it that it was the couple's last dinner at the hotel on December 24, 1975...Later in 2004, the remains of a similar plane were spotted nearby, a Cessna but not a model 150, there was never a definitive answer...Anyway, a more original and exciting vacation that leaves lifelong impressions - the woman could not have imagined.

(Roger Mortis, 067)

The Troll

I don't know exactly when forums emerged as virtual platforms, probably in the mid-nineties since the web has existed since 1990 (www =/= internet) but what is certain is that the most famous troll in history created a username around 1998 and became famous in 2000-2001 by posing as a time traveler!

Today, virtual platforms are already a well-known thing, even the villagers of the Fire Zone and the Indians of Gran Chaco have their own profiles on various networks, the trolls are unsuccessful and obvious and the members are cynical and it is unlikely that anyone would raise an uproar like the one raised by the user TimeTravel_0, later known as John Titor, on several American forums. The user started threads and chats about an apocalypse that would follow in the year 2038 due to a computer bug that would not recognize 2038 after January 19th of that year and because of that all Unix-based systems would be reset back to 1901 and with that shit would follow on planet Earth.

John Titor's original time destination was 1975 and he personally existed in 2036 and had to go back to the time of afro-haircuts and bell-ringers to find an IBM-5100 computer because only such a machine could be used to fix the bug due to the use of the APL and BASIC programming languages ​​(!?).

For personal reasons, he took a short break in 2000 (for a time traveler, it's like stopping at Straža for a cigarette and some cookies, I guess) and decided to reorganize the world for the upcoming events. And they weren't fun, a new civil war in America, a breakthrough in quantum research that would lead to the development of time machines, a shitty American election, the collapse of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, and of course the Third World War that would last a short time and start this year, 2015.

Today, it's easy to make fun of all of that, but in those innocent virtual times, John Titor was taken seriously by many, his outbursts became the subject of discussion in virtual spaces around the world, radio, television, and newspapers published stories about the `prophet`, later books appeared, and all of that made John one of the first internet celebrities in history, even before the existence of FB and YouTube. The type trolled, trolled and trolled but it was quality trolling, using a solid knowledge base about physics, history, politics and above all dystopian scenarios although it was probably inspired by movies, of course here is Terminator where we have a character returned from the future in order to protect the woman who is supposed to give birth to the leader of the resistance against the machines and of course Back to the Future because Titor claimed that the time machine is an adapted car from the 2030s, a homage to the immortal automotive flop DeLorean, the 1.21 Gigawatts and the 88 miles per hour...

But all that net-popularity brought him nothing because the `Curse of the Troll` came on the scene which means that the troll cannot overcome his troll identity and appear in public as a real person because that would eliminate everything he claimed in the form of a virtual character. Unlike later net-celebrities, Titor remained within the virtual and somewhere in March 2001 he stopped posting forever. (Or at least on the topic of `time travel`)...

It was never found out who was the character behind all this, IP, cookie and provider-based searches did not bear fruit, which testifies to the troll's fairly good IT skills. Later, an Italian TV station hired a private detective who was guided by the logic that the troll must be an IT specialist. The investigation showed the existence of a company named John Titor which appeared in 2003 in Florida but only as a registered entity without offices and employees and although without definitive evidence, the conclusion was that the troll was the brother of the company's founder, an IT specialist named John Haber who for unknown reasons started trolling the Internet.

There was no definitive evidence, but indications pointed to the identity of the troll, whose originality and creativity could not be denied. Today, there are no such trolls anymore, only retards who annoy the world and for whom it would be said that it would be better to be themselves, no matter how boring and imbecile they are, because their alter ego is idiotic and worthless, a phenomenon that not a single virtual platform that offers an incognito identity is deprived of.

(Roger Mortis, 066)

Seeking the Sun

In the bright annals of sectarianism, the name of the Order of the Solar Temple is written in pale gold letters, an international cult that became famous through ritual suicides, murders, connections with organized crime and providing refuge to escaped Nazis. What more could you want from a sect?

Based in the Francophone world and founded in the fifties, this sect preached teachings based on Catholic mysticism mixed with general Esotericism, believed that they were the heirs of the Knights Templar and awaited the second coming of Jesus. In addition, they were actively engaged in the search for the Antichrist and in the collection of suspicious characters with a Nazi past, such as ex-Gestapo man Max Heindl. Among other things, they were inspired by the teachings of the Thelemic duke Aleister Crowley, although they were not strangers to the belief in aliens.

And it is well known that any sect that cares about its reputation must have contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, simply it`s a must...so the Order would have existed as another fringe group of sectarians, if there had not been a change in the leadership of the sect. Certain Joseph di Mambro and Luc Jure appeared on the scene in the eighties and began radicalizing the belief structure. The escalation began in 1993 when it is believed that the first ``purges`` were carried out, murders of members but also of ``civilians``, culminating in the murder of a baby who was liquidated due to unfounded suspicions that it was the Antichrist himself, I assume that they probably watched the movie Omen and took it all too seriously.

The baby was killed on a specially prepared altar using a wooden stake through the heart. Although it is more of an anti-vampire than an anti-devil technology, according to the sect members it was also effective against newborn devils.

A few weeks after the murder of the baby, convinced that they must ascend to a new dimension, in 1994 at several locations in France, Switzerland and Canada, the sect members organized a `last supper` (it is not known what the menu of that culinary event was), dressed in the latest sect fashion (quasi-knight's robes), committed mass suicides and murders of those who were `weak` in order to take their own lives... and in all of this, at least 54 people suffered, including the aforementioned sect leaders. The media and the police entered the scene, but despite this, the sect members continued with sporadic suicides and homicides at least until 1999, when it is believed that a total of 79 victims had fallen, although some speculate that the figure was between 100 and 110 dead.

The new leader of the sect in its post-suicidal version was tried in France in the early 21st century but was acquitted due to lack of evidence. This sect did not receive the media coverage of the People's Temple or Aum Shinrikyo (Canada may not be as televised as the United States), but it was nevertheless one of the most violent cults of the twentieth century, at the turn of the millennium - which for some reason irritated sectarians from Tokyo to Krakow and from Geneva to Pretoria and represented a serious motive for sectarian violence directed at itself...and at the world.

(Roger Mortis, 065)

The Devil in Love

That dealing with devils and occultism is never a good idea, the best example was the French writer Jacques Cazotte, an unusual character for his time, probably the first science fiction writer in the world (he wrote about submarines sailing through the Mediterranean) and one of the early romantics, one could say something like a typical Trendsetter person of his time. His most famous novel was the romantic adventure `Le Diable Amoreux` (The Devil in Love) where the main character fell in love with a woman who was actually Lucifer...

As an original person, he was often invited to the parties of the aristocracy of the time, and one day in 1788 he was invited to the very cream of the French society of the time, including the king and queen (the one with the cakes). Since rumors often appeared that Cazotte had the ability to see the future, those present joked and told jokes about him, which after a while angered Jacques. And then he asked to address the audience with a few predictions...

First he announced that very soon (he did not specify an exact date) major riots, unprecedented in France, would begin. The audience was not impressed, as there had always been riots and rebellions...but then Cazotte announced that the king and queen would end up beheaded!

A tense and uncomfortable silence ensued, the classic conversational `bomb`, to put it into perspective, the same effect would have if a guy came to a big party, took off his clothes and shitted in the middle of the room/podium/bar/whatever. But that was just the beginning, as his fellow writer Nicolas Chamfort tried to downplay the impact of Jacques' statement...only to provoke him even more, with Jacques telling him that in a few years Chamfort would die in agony after 22 failed suicide attempts

That already seemed excessive, come on, the king and queen, but 22 suicide attempts!?

Next was the Marquis Condorcet, for whom the prediction was the same - that he would die by his own hand, but less dramatically (by poisoning) and shortly before he was to be tried...Finally, a certain Jean-François Delarpe, a hardened skeptic and atheist, joined the conversation, who tried to ridicule Cazotte, but in vain, and the final prediction followed - that Delarpe would become a fanatical Christian... Obviously upset and before answering the questions about his own future, Jacques Cazotte left the party.

No one knows whether the present cadres took it seriously, as they continued to joke about it after Cazotte's departure...but later in their lives, that evening must have come back to them vividly, purely to torment them in the last days of their stay in this world. The French Revolution began a year after the aforementioned party, just as Jacques had predicted. The king and queen ended up beheaded, Chamfort in an attempt to avoid arrest attempted suicide but discovered that the blade of the knife was quite dull and needed 22 cuts around the veins to finally 'succeed' (he died of blood loss a few days later), the Marquis Condorcet became a prominent figure in the revolution but after voting against the death penalty for the king - he fell out of favor with the Jacobins and was arrested and in the spirit of the situation, knowing that the guillotine was working 24/7 - in a fit of paranoia he poisoned himself to avoid trial.

Delarpe also participated in the revolution and witnessed the Reign of Terror and all the "beauty" that happened, only to repent a few years later and become a fanatical Christian. Jacques Cazotte did not mention his own future for a reason, because he himself ended up on the guillotine in the whirlwind of the revolution, leaving this sad reality before all his predictions came true.

(Roger Mortis, 064)

Lost Chinamen

At a time when Shuten Doji riding a Tengu was sweeping across the Chinese Mainland and the winds of Absolute Evil, manifesting as Japanese soldiers, were setting new standards of evil and destruction, culminating in the `Rape of Nanking`, the temporary Chinese capital - an event occurred that contained something more than evil. Or less...However, disappearances are everyday tragic events, kidnappings or unexplained cases have always existed. Most often, they are individual disappearances. However, in China, perhaps in accordance with the size of the population - it happened that thousands of people disappeared at once.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), the most mystical disappearance of as many as 2,900 soldiers, members of the Chinese Army, took place near the city of Nanjing. On December 9, 1939, a battalion of the Chinese army under the command of Colonel Li Fu Hsien arrived as reinforcements for the units trying to stop the Japanese aggressors. It should be noted that it was probably a regiment and not a battalion, since the figure of 3,000 soldiers is much closer to a regiment than to a battalion, which is part of a regiment...

The unit was deployed on a section of the front of about three kilometers, with an outpost of several dozen soldiers ahead. The soldiers arrived in the evening and were deployed in positions by 4 a.m. No clashes were expected during the night, and after sunrise... there was neither a trace nor a sound of the Chinese battalion!

Some officers woke the colonel up because they were worried that they could not get in touch with his soldiers. After several unsuccessful attempts, it was decided to go by vehicle to the scene and see for themselves what the problem was. They had something to see, the trenches, the tents, the warehouses - they were empty. At first they suspected desertion - but desertion of 100% of the soldiers and officers - together is impossible. Besides, they would have left some trace of movement, after all, it was almost 3,000 people. None of that, apart from a few places where a fire had been lit in the evening - there was nothing that would have hinted at the fate of the soldiers.

From the moment of the last communication with members of the battalion to the arrival at the scene by the colonel, only three hours had passed...The colonel and some officers made their way to the outpost where a small group of soldiers from the same battalion were keeping guard and remained the only ones from the battalion who had not disappeared. But they too had seen and heard nothing and were themselves shocked by the news. The surrounding villagers were questioned but they too saw nothing, no one heard any shooting or movement

Another theory was that the battalion surrendered to the Japanese but that turned out to be untrue, as it was determined after the war that the Japanese units on that part of the front did not capture anyone that night and not only that but were not in combat with anyone that night. There was a bridge that had to be crossed to reach the Japanese lines but the Japanese guards did not see anyone. The missing never appeared anywhere, neither in their places of residence nor with their families and friends, they were simply literally swallowed up by the night.

The only Chinese who were more lost than the aforementioned soldiers were the tourists who, in their blissful ignorance, emerged from nowhere at the beginning of the summer of 1992...just in time for the closing of the ring of the Chetnik hordes around Sarajevo...

(Roger Mortis, 063)

No Good deed goes unpunished

The diagnosis of mental illness has always been a fertile ground for abuse. We are not talking about laconic `diagnoses` of everyday laypeople, but about completely professional people, trained in dealing with mental illness, who put their reputation at the service of various regimes, corporations or simply undesirable heirs to a will. From the legendary Lobotomies of enemies of individuals or groups, through the massive diagnostic avalanche of diseases and `illnesses` that results in the use of legal drugs in the amount of tens of billions per year, to the placement of completely normal `mentally ill patients` in insane asylums as punishment for opposing a certain authority or paradigm...

About a year ago in the Canadian city of Halifax, an unknown person began to wander around the city and distribute cash and silver coins to completely unknown people.

The choice of people to whom the guy handed out money (mostly in 50 and 100 dollar denominations) was completely random - from some guy who worked at a gas station to housewives who opened their doors when he rang their bell. The guy had a beard, was of medium build and didn't seem unusual in any way, he wore patched jeans and a sweater. If asked where he was from, he would answer that he came "from the woods" and sometimes he would look up (sent by God!?) or mention something vague in the context that they need to be helped in heaven and their money returned...The reason for this outburst of altruism remains unknown, although the man later mentioned that he wanted to help those in need and humanity in general, but what is well known is the reaction of the system.

And it was expected and fierce.

Namely, the guy was detained and put in an insane asylum because he was handing out money. In the eyes of the state, giving money to strangers is a clear symptom of insanity. In the whole situation, there was no shortage of psychiatrists who would put a signature that leads directly to a room with soft walls...Is there a law that prohibits giving a gift to a stranger, I am not sure, I would say that there is no such thing even in Canada, but a suitable legal act can be found if necessary, because the law is dough in the hands of the government and can be kneaded as needed.

And so the man ended up in a straitjacket...

Some of the people to whom he gave money made a fuss in order to release him and draw attention to the case. The media also got involved and the identity of the character was discovered in a short time, it was a certain Richard Wright and many of his acquaintances, together with his daughter, claim that Richard had no mental illness and that the reaction of the authorities was shameful and frightening. Which brings us to the realization that the path that `undoubtedly` leads to a yellow van and a shirt with sewn-on sleeves is, among other things, through unprovoked good deeds.

(Roger Mortis, 062)

Little Big Horn

The history of the colonization of new territories in the `new world` is above all a history of a clash between dramatic differences in the technology of killing. Usually military operations ended with a massacre of the indigenous population due to a clear technological superiority, (the famous Gun, Steel and Germs by Jared Diamond). But every rule is not a rule if there is no exception like Isandlwana. Or the Little Big Horn...

Opponents: US Army (7th Cavalry Regiment, 678 soldiers under the command of Colonel George Custer) vs. Indian group (Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho, about 3,000 warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.)

When: June 26, 1876

Where: Little Big Horn River Valley, Montana

The U.S. Army was tasked with finally driving the stubborn Indians into the planned reservations, if necessary by force. According to the agreement between the U.S. government and Chief Red Cloud, several Indian tribes were to completely relocate from their territories to those assigned to them by the U.S. government, in order for the land to be inhabited by white colonists. Many of the tribes rejected the agreement and began to resist. Especially the aforementioned tribes grouped under the leadership of the Sioux chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. The American administration, under pressure from the hordes of white settlers, decides to lead a military expedition and herd the Indians into a reservation, and if it cannot do so, to exterminate as many of them as possible.

After several massacres of Indian tribes, mostly women, children, and the elderly, not warriors (atrocities later renamed "battles" by Hollywood), American forces, primarily the 7th Cavalry Regiment, decide to take a final offensive in the Little Big Horn River valley, where scouts locate a large group of Indian warriors. Colonel Custer is eager to gain military glory, since the massacres of women and children he has committed in the previous months could not bring him any glory or honor. He decides to attack alone with his regiment, decides not to wait for the infantry, and refuses to take the Gatling machine guns offered to him by the commander of the 20th Infantry Regiment because he believes they will only slow him down in the attack...Divided into four squads, the regiment is to attack the Indian forces according to Custer's plan, the first squad directly, the second and third on the flank, and the fourth to cut off the Indians' possible escape route.

Although the scouts report a concentration of a large group, according to their estimates at least 1500-2000 people, Custer arrogantly decides that the numerical superiority of the Indians is not a big problem...Around 3 p.m., the attack begins. The first squad galloped directly at the group of Indians, who were armed mainly with firearms, with the popular Winchester repeaters that held 7-15 rounds in the magazine, depending on the model, unlike the standard US Army rifles that had to be reloaded after each shot. Naturally, the Indians had purchased the rifles from whites, for a good price. In a bizarre twist of circumstances, technological innovation was on the side of the native forces this time. At the same time, the second and third squads pressed on the flanks in order to outflank the Indians. However, Crazy Horse easily anticipated this and led a large group of warriors (about 1,000) to outflank the second and third squads using numerical superiority, speed, and superior riding skills.

In a classic encirclement pincer maneuver, three-quarters of Custer's force walked into a trap. The fourth squad, which was in the background, hearing that a major battle had broken out, headed towards the scene in order to unblock the three squads. During that time, completely surrounded and with the balance of forces clearly in favor of the Indians, the three squads were destroyed to the last man in less than two hours. Custer fell on the battlefield and was later scalped. The fourth squad was powerless to do anything more, it was only drawn into the debacle and completely defeated like the remaining three, thus giving birth to the legend of the masters of the rural guerrilla, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and George Custer, who nevertheless entered history through the back door, also finds his place on various rankings of the most incompetent commanders in military history...

The losses of the Indians are estimated at around 130 dead and 160 wounded. From the  American side what survived was - one horse...

(Roger Mortis, 061)

The Man from Japan

Forget Dan Brown and company, the real plot twist surrounding Jesus comes from...Japan...because the Son of Man was buried there! Jesus, contrary to the popular belief that his name was Yeshua and that he came from Judea, was actually called Kirisuto and lived in the village of Shingomura in Aomori Prefecture, until he was 21 years old when, together with his brother Isukiri, he set out to spread his shiny new religion, a mixture of local versions of Buddhism and animism (!?) throughout the world. After various adventures through Siberia and Central Asia, he arrived in Judea, where his teachings, for some reason, met with great response from the local people, but also hostility from the local rabbis and the Roman authorities, who, as we know, `tailored his hat`...

Pontius Pilate sentenced him to crucifixion and all that, but here Isukiri (who supposedly looked a lot like his brother) bursts into the story and offered to sacrifice himself on the cross so that Kirisuto could survive and continue God's mission. As we know, there is a gap in the biography of Jesus in the Bible, dating back some eighteen years, which has motivated many to speculate about the actions of Jesus (Kirisuto?) during that period.

Kirisuto survived thanks to his brother's sacrifice and headed back to Japan. After many ups and downs, he finally got home and decided to practice spirituality in a more down-to-earth way, dedicated himself to growing rice, got married (sorry Dan Brown, there were people before you with such a theory) and had three daughters. Later, he started preaching again, but these were calm and gentle sermons, traveled throughout all the Japanese islands and passed away at the ripe old age of 106. His lineage supposedly continues to this day in Japan, where the Sawaguchi family still cherishes the tradition of their famous ancestor and tells the legend to the rare visitors and tourists.

On their property is the grave of Kirisuto himself, and nearby is buried an ear of his brother Isukiri (!?) which he managed to obtain in an unknown way from the Roman legionaries (perhaps from Longinus himself who was hanging around on the Calvary ​​hill at the time) and they even have a place where a lock of hair from Mary Magdalene is buried, a certain Jewish woman with whom Kirisuto had a short but intense relationship during his stay in Judea, although it is not known how it all ended...

The documents that the Sawaguchi family had were taken for testing in Tokyo in the 1930s but suffered during the war when Tokyo was bombed with napalm, killing more civilians than in the explosions of the two atomic bombs combined - and many objects of state importance disappeared along with many archives full of writings and documents that were there.

Which is...quite convenient.

(Roger Mortis, 060)

The Christmas Truce

Last Christmas marked exactly one hundred and ten years since an incredible event that is as important today as it was then and that always restores faith in humanity, at least for a brief moment that lasts no more than a blink of an eye...

Christmas, 1914.

The Western Front, death and suffering, attacks on barbed wire across no man's land, from the English Channel to the Swiss border, a mass slaughter was taking place. To make things even worse, if that were possible, nature joined in on the human evil by sending the lowest winter temperatures since they were measured. Snipers were waiting for an opportunity to kill some careless soldier or, better yet, an officer of the enemy. In such an atmosphere, Christmas Eve arrived.

On both sides of the trenches on the front line, people were slouching, freezing and waiting for dawn.

Suddenly, strange sounds began to reach from the German trenches. With each note, more and more intelligible, through the fog and the stench of rotting corpses, through the craters full of poisoned water, rats, blood and mud, through the murky night, across no man's land - the verses of Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht began to reach British and French ears. First individual voices and then more and more German soldiers began to sing. Soon, along the entire line, tens of thousands of throats were singing the most famous Christmas carol.

The first tears appeared on the cheeks of the frozen and shocked Allied soldiers. It was probably the last thing they expected in the world at that moment. Death was certainly expected with much greater certainty. The song began to be shyly sung in both English and French, in both versions.

One song, three languages, one night.

After a while, the guards noticed German soldiers with white flags and without weapons appearing in no man's land and saying something. A few more desperate, more runaway or more humane soldiers from the Allied side (for whom how) arbitrarily rushed to meet their `enemies`. The first peaceful contact between people on both sides occurred. Soon the meeting became massive and cigarettes were exchanged, those who knew the enemy's language started chatting, and modest meals were shared among themselves. The British also had a completely British idea at dawn, several improvised footballs appeared and several football matches began. That day, no one fired a shot and orders were almost ignored everywhere.

The officer cadres on both sides were shocked and concerned by such outbursts of humanity and the senior generals decided to put an end to such deviant and unpatriotic phenomena as playing football and sharing a portion with yesterday's opponent. The first death sentences for treason were handed down and people were shot for sharing a cigarette with a man mobilized and brought to the front - from the opposite side.

In the following days, young men were taken out to be shot, made to sit on a chair at dawn after having been isolated in barracks all night, probably to contemplate their `sin`, tied to the chair and unable to control their bladder and bowels from fear, screaming and crying - only contributing to the curse of the situation, scenes that are impossible for any film, but which served as a warning that the state expects you to kill the designated peer, the `enemy`, and not to sing Christmas carols with him. The event, as expected, remained on the margins of history, although it is more important than all the disgusting battles and military operations that wiped out an entire generation...

That night. That morning. That Football.

That night atoned for all the sins of humanity in one magical moment.

(Roger Mortis, 059)

Life Saving Nightmare

Some people are said to have been lucky if they bought a winning lottery ticket. And some who avoided the grim reaper thanks to impulsiveness or even a dream.

Of the 213 passengers and crew of the S.S. "Warratah", a passenger ship that traveled in the opposite direction from the then popular route for settling the South land, that is, from Melbourne, Australia - to Britain in 1909 - 211 people disappeared without a trace or a sound, except for two who we will come back to later.

There was a passenger ship that carried emigrants to Australia and was returning with a new round of passengers who were going to visit the ``old country``, a brand new ship, although not particularly exceptional, displaced some 16,000 tons of water - quite solid dimensions for the time. That ship had already made one trip to Britain and back. The second voyage will remain recorded as another in the series of inexplicable mysteries that fill the ocean expanses. Departing from Melbourne, the ship stopped in Durban, South Africa, among other ports, to refuel. The next stop was Cape Town, another in a series of ports on the way to Europe.

One of the passengers, tormented by nightmares the previous day in which he clearly dreamed that the ship would sink - decided to disembark in Durban. Another, completely impulsively decided to shorten the trip and try to find work in Durban. This would save their lives because the next day the ``Warratah`` set sail on a journey, on which it would be spotted by several ships, before disappearing totally, completely and irrevocably.

At least two ships passed by the ``Warratah``, the second even exchanged Morse signals using the ship's searchlights. Everything was in order, the sea was relatively calm although the weather forecast was not the best. The last ship to spot the `Warratah` was 180 nautical miles from Durban. The `Warratah` was expected to arrive in Cape Town in a few days...which turned into a few weeks, which gave way to months...never to arrive and to this day after 116 years the fate of the ship is unknown.

The usual culprit was sought in the heavy seas but the "Warratah" was a large ship with powerful engines and the conditions were far from threatening for such a ship. Others speculated that the ship's center of gravity in relation to the metacenter was allegedly miscalculated which reflected in the ship's construction with incorrect statics and accordingly impaired buoyancy and stability... but this is unlikely since the ship had already traveled from Britain to Australia, the longest sea route in the world. An unstable ship would have a hard time doing that, especially since ships always have ballast to maintain stability. In 1999, there was a rumor that the sunken ship had been found, but later examinations indicated that it was nothing of the ``Warratah'' but a completely different sunken ship from World War Two.

The team that was searching for the ship in 2004, after 22 years of research and searching, finally gave up on it all because the ship was nowhere where, according to all the laws of logic, it should have been. The passenger who had the dream about the sinking tried to warn several passengers to get off. No one listened to him...

(Roger Mortis, 058)

Now you see it, now you don`t!

Disappearances have always been a timeless phenomenon, if one can say so, because no matter how much conviction and consensus there is that the worst has happened - there always remains the hope that somewhere out there, somehow, some... managed to cheat death, what's more, that they may be living better than before the disappearance, a diluted version of the myths of an afterlife in which, unfortunately, too many people believe, to whom pre-mortal existence brings only misery.

A Boeing B-707 in a cargo version of the Brazilian company Varig took off from Tokyo to Rio on January 30, 1979 with six crew members and no passengers. Communication with flight control was normal, the weather conditions were ok, there was nothing special... until half an hour after takeoff, all communication abruptly ceased, which was actually the pilots' last contact with this dimension. There are similarities with the case of the Malaysian plane from last year, except that there were other factors at play here.

The investigation quickly reached a dead end, and a statement was later issued that it was a case of cabin decompression - without any evidence, absolutely nothing to support such a claim. The factor that was unofficially significant was the presence of 153 paintings by Japanese painter Manabu Mabe, estimated at $1.3 million at the time (more than $4 million today).

Was that amount enough for the crew to see a way to secure a carefree future? Maybe. Considering that rumors later emerged that some of the paintings had surfaced through private collections and auctions for closed-door clients, it is possible that the crew had made a calculation.

The problem with this theory is that it is unlikely that all six would agree to separate themselves from their families, friends, careers, and their entire lives up to that point with a total cessation of communication with anyone. Another problem is the landing. The B-707 is a first-generation long-haul jet airliner and required a fairly long, concrete runway. Not that it couldn't have landed on an improvised one, especially if it was a one-off situation, but it's still unlikely. And where would that runway be?

Other theories followed later, such as custom and order, for example that the KGB made a deal with the pilots to land in North Korea, probably based on a similar case when Japanese citizens, members of the (then) infamous urban guerrilla group known as the Japanese Red Army, hijacked a passenger plane and landed in Pyongyang (to the usual interdimensional creatures and the on-duty aliens who love airplanes and ships, because they are collectors of retro technology from planet Earth. Nothing definitive was revealed, the official report declared war on elementary logic and the case remains another in a series of mysteries.

(Roger Mortis, 057)