Emily's Ghost — A Classic Spectral Story

Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Shirley Jackson, H.P. Lovecraft, Oliver Onions, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde … Paranormal fans will recognize names of classic horror writers. One other should appear on this list, an author better known for her cosy Callie Parrish novels. That writer crafted one of the finest stories of ectoplasmic– or any other– genre. SleuthSayers is proud to bring you the first US publication of a modern gothic tale from our friend and colleague, Fran Rizer.

— Leigh

Emily’s Ghost
by Fran Rizer
(12 Dec 1944 – 24 Dec 2019)

I sit silently as Drew drives our red Porsche along the rutted dirt road. It’s been three days since he spoke to me this time. Seventy-two hours of quiet. An eternity of longing to hear him say my name – “Emily.” I hated that word until I met Drew. The people in South Carolina’s low country drop the “i” and it comes out Emm-lee.

The first time I ever saw Drew, I’d gone to put flowers on Grandma’s grave. He was in the Beaufort churchyard sketching moss-covered trees and magnolias. I stood behind him and watched as he created a whole world out of just a few pencil strokes. After several moments, he turned and looked at me with unwavering blue eyes. The man took my breath.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Sometimes I’m flippant, downright sarcastic. Got an attitude. It’s a wonder I didn’t answer, “What’s it to you?” Instead I replied, “I’m Emily.”

“Emily as in Emily Dickinson?” he asked, and I laughed with pure pleasure. He’d pronounced my name with three delicate syllables. It sounded positively delicious when Drew said it.

“Yes,” I answered, “but I don’t make up poetry. I try to write stories.”

“Why try? Why don’t you just write them?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m not too good at it yet.”

“You can be if you want to be,” Drew said, and I believed him.

***

Andrew Wyeth, Sea Fog

That’s how it began. Before long, we were spending most of our time together. Lots of days sitting side by side in churchyards or marshes. Me writing my little tales on a yellow legal pad while Drew sketched or painted.

“What are you writing?” Drew asked.

“A story to send to a magazine. I need to see my words in print. I want people to read what I write.”

“Where did you get the idea?”

“I made it up. It’s about a boy and girl falling in love and seeing a ghost.”

“Oh,” Drew said and went back to drawing.

When it rained hard and we couldn’t sit outside, we escaped into Drew’s battered old van. He kept a collection of Andrew Wyeth prints there. During bad weather and at night, Drew showed them to me.

“I want to paint like Wyeth!” he exclaimed. His eyes lit up like he was on fire inside. “When Wyeth paints fog and wind, you can feel them! Just look at this print. It’s called ‘Sea Fog.’ You can see the mist beginning to drift, to wisp away. You can feel the breeze tease your shirt in ‘Wind from the Sea.’ That’s how I’m going to paint!”

I didn’t have any books of my own, just the ones I checked out from the library. I’d hold up my favorite collections of short stories – ‘Skeleton Crew’ by Stephen King or one of Edgar Allan Poe’s and say, “Someday I’m going to write like this – mysteries and about ghosts and spooky things.”

“But, Emily, you’ve never been through any of that. Write about the life you’ve lived, people like the ones you know.”

I tossed my head to swing my hair back. “Don’t tell me what to do!” I snapped at him.

Andrew Wyeth, Christina’s World

Drew turned away from me and looked at his Wyeth prints again. He loved them all, but his favorite painting was “Christina’s World.” Everyone’s seen the picture of a young woman in a field of grass looking up toward a clapboard house and barn on top of a knoll. The girl’s wearing a pink dress, and her position looks strange. It’s as though she’s crawling, but her body seems twisted.

“That’s Christina Olson,” Drew explained. “She was crippled from childhood. Wyeth painted her and that farm for almost thirty years.” The picture has a haunting quality. Drew said, “It merges a feeling of loss and a sense of fulfillment at the same time.” At first, I thought that was ridiculously impossible, but now it makes sense.

When Drew decided we should live together, I told him that wasn’t how my Mama raised me, so we got married. Drew started selling paintings, and I mailed some of my stories off to magazines. I cried a lot the first year. Every time the mailman delivered a rejection letter, I sobbed. Mama always scolded me, “Don’t carry on so!” and I’d wail even louder.

My husband comforted me. He held me in his arms and gently brushed the hair away from my eyes. He kept telling me, “Quit worrying about writing proper by some teacher’s rules and making up supernatural stories about vampires and witches. Your stories about ghosts and murders sound too manufactured, too made up. Keep your stories real. Write those funny things you’ve told me about your relatives and low-country people, and put them on paper the same way you tell them.” I sniffled when he added, “And you can stop studying the dictionary to learn bigger words. Convey those yarns in your own vocabulary.”

I argued with him. “No magazine or book is gonna publish those stories,” I whined. “I want to write about the paranormal.”

Usually I go on and do things my own way when people try to tell me what to do, but I got turned down every time I sent out a manuscript. I finally decided to try Drew’s suggestions. I wrote an old family anecdote of how my grandparents always killed a couple of chickens for Thanksgiving because they didn’t raise turkeys and couldn’t afford to buy one. Finally the year came when they bought a big bird from the store – a Tom, the biggest frozen turkey available. Grandma put it on the back porch to thaw. When she went back to check on the bird, she found their big ole cat named Tom chowin’ down on that Tom turkey. Grandma used to say, “If Grandpa’d had his way, we’d of had roasted Tom cat for Thanksgiving that year.” I mailed the story off to a regional magazine.

You could’ve heard me hollering in the next county when the mail man brought an envelope with a check inside. When I followed Drew’s advice and wrote the stories like I told them, checks and contracts kept coming instead of rejections. Drew told me what to write and sometimes tried to tell me how to write. He’d brush my bangs out of my eyes and say, “Don’t you think it’s time you started writing on a computer instead of with a pencil?” I didn’t switch to writing on the computer, but I did use the Dell he bought me to type up my stories after I wrote them on the yellow pads.

My work was even reviewed in newspapers and a couple of magazines. That was good. The bad thing was that they called me “folksy” and referred to me as a young literary Grandma Moses – like writing and painting are comparable!

Drew refused to see why that made me mad. He said, “You should be happy and proud,” but I tried to explain that all I’d done was follow his directions. I felt like it was his accomplishment, not mine. He was an artist! Where’d he get off telling me how to write?

Paintings kept selling, too. We were as excited as kids on the last day of school when he had his first show at an art gallery in Charleston. Drew said, “I can’t wear paint-splattered jeans, and bought himself a new outfit with a sports jacket.

He gave me money for a dress, but he didn’t like anything I picked out. Finally, Drew bought a dress and brought it home. I tried it on, and Drew said it was “perfect.” I couldn’t see wearing black anywhere except to a funeral, but he just laughed and said, “It’s a classic, your first little black dress.” He gave me a necklace to wear with it. Not dime store beads, jewelry store pearls!

We moved out of my Mama’s house and rented a place of our own. Most of that time was happy for me and I think for Drew, too. I still liked to go with him when he went out sketching, and even then, he listened when I talked about stories I wanted to write.

Sometimes I’d take along a book like Ghosts of South Carolina and read instead of writing. I learned about dozens of apparitions in our state, and when I told Drew about the phantom hitchhiker on the Sumter Highway or the Gray Ghost on the coast who warns of hurricanes, he listened. We even went together to Edisto Island and visited a crypt that was said to be haunted and a tree that is rumored to have a pirate specter guarding treasure buried beneath it. Drew was the most patient man I’d ever known and never complained about me babbling on or wanting to sit and wait to see if a spirit would appear.

Before long, we started making real money selling his pictures and my stories. I have to confess my ghost stories didn’t sell, but the simple low- country ones did. That’s when Drew decided he wanted to move back to Maine. “There’s nothing wrong with painting swamps and marshes!” I screamed, but he ignored me.

Drew told folks I won that skirmish because we moved upstate, which was a lot closer to my home place than Maine. So far as I was concerned, I’d lost anyway. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to move to Maine. I didn’t want to move anywhere away from the coast of South Carolina!

The Greenville Museum of Art is home of an impressive permanent collection of Andrew Wyeth’s work. When CNN told us Wyeth had died at age ninety-two, Drew insisted we make a road trip from Beaufort to see the exhibit. He stood in awe before each piece. “Why are you staring like that?” I asked. “I don’t see one bit of difference between this stuff and your prints.”

“These are the real thing. It’s like being in the presence of a lifelong hero.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I always planned to travel to meet the man someday, but I waited too long. All I can do is visit his work.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s past lunchtime,” I said. “Let’s go find a restaurant.”

Drew shook his head and looked at me with disbelief, but I kept complaining about how hungry I was, so we finally left. In my opinion, it was a long ride for nothing. I had no idea that useless day trip would be a major part of deciding where we’d live. A week later, Drew disappeared for several days. When he came back, he said “we’d” bought a three-story clapboard house on a hill a little north of Greenville. I screamed and hollered, but we moved there anyway.

The studio he contracted to have built looked like a farm shed. The new garage in the back was a fake barn, and Drew scolded me when I didn’t park in it. By the time I’d followed around the road that circled our hill to the one driveway that led up to the house, I wasn’t in the mood to continue around our home to park in the barn.

“Always park inside and close the doors,” he said. “New vans and sports cars around our home don’t fit the picture!”

Andrew Wyeth, Witching Hour

Drew cut down the beautiful old trees around the house and had wheat planted in the stark, bare fields. Our farmhouse was exactly like a picture postcard of “Christina’s World” without Christina. Sometimes I thought Drew would be happy if I were crippled like she was. Maybe then he’d paint me. In all our years together, he’d never drawn or painted my likeness. He claimed he didn’t do portraits, and I never saw people in his work, but it still made me mad. He always told me what to do – write this way, stand that way. I told him, “If I was good enough for you when you met me, I’m good enough for you now, because I’m not gonna change!”

His answer was usually a muttered, “Most folks grow up eventually.”

***

Then the quiet times came. I call them quiet times, but the silence is one-sided. Drew stops talking to me, but I continue speaking to him. When I wake up in the morning and hear the birds singing outside and see the sunshine kaleidoscoping patterns on the walls through the lace curtains, I always lean over to kiss Drew and tell him about whatever I plan to write that day. Most times, he listens and then kisses me, too, but when he’s having a quiet time, he turns his back to me.

Drew doesn’t answer when I call him for breakfast during a quiet time. He comes into the kitchen and sits down at the big, round oak table. He eats whatever I’ve cooked for him with no comments about whether he likes it or not. Doesn’t seem to matter if it’s chicken-fried steak, eggs with cheese and scratch biscuits or simply grits with bologna gravy. Never says a word to me during quiet times. Just eats, then gets up and goes to his studio or climbs in his shiny new van and drives away for the day.

I wonder if he’s out sketching and painting or if he’s gone to the museum to “visit” his beloved Andrew Wyeth paintings.

Water colors of dilapidated, falling down barns have been selling like McDonald’s quarter-pounders. Drew’s even painted some old crypts and graveyards around Greenville, and those pictures have been pulling in big money, too. I don’t think it’s fair that he tells me not to write about ghosts or graves and things like that, but he does those cemetery paintings. When I stomp my feet and tell him how I feel, he ignores me.

Lately, it seems we’re having quiet times more than ever. I’d think he’d be happy that he’s successful, but who can tell? He never complains about anything, so how do I know whether he’s angry, disappointed, or just sad? He looks at me different, too. He narrows his eyes, and the intensity of his art is in those blue slits. Those cold, blue eyes freeze me so bad I just shiver.

***

Now we’re riding in the Porsche with the top down. He hasn’t said a word all the way back from an art show at some high-falutin’ gallery in Atlanta. Actually, it’s been three days since Drew spoke to me. The longest quiet time was almost two weeks. I wonder how many days and nights this one will last. What caused it? Most times he doesn’t seem to notice me at all anymore, but the night of the opening reception, he kept glaring at me. During the first hour, he told me to stand up straight so many times that I got mad and left. I went out and sat in the car.

Thank heaven we’re almost home. I look ahead and see our lonely house sitting atop the bare hill surrounded by fields of wheat that look like dried grass. A delicate breeze whispers a warning through the wheat, but I ignore it.

“A lot of your work at that show was those cemetery pictures,” I say, “but you always tell me that my mystery and ghost stories aren’t as good as the stories about my family and folks living on the coast. I don’t think that’s fair.” He stays silent. “Why don’t you paint people?” I demand.

Drew doesn’t say anything, just keeps driving.

“It’s taking forever to get there,” I say. “You should have a drive cut from the house down to the road on this side instead of having to ride all around the hill before we get to the turn-off. I’m so tired of everything having to look like the Olson farm.”

Drew keeps driving, his white-knuckled fingers clenched tight against the steering wheel. His eyes stare straight ahead, and his jaw works – flex and release, flex and release.

“Hurry up!” I say, “I need to use the bathroom!”

Unexpectedly, Drew turns off the road before we reach our long driveway. We’re hurtling across the field, headed toward the house.

“Stop!” I yell at him. “You’re going too fast!”

Drew slams his foot on the accelerator. The low undercarriage of the Porsche drags against the plowed furrows of the field shearing off wheat and flinging it into the air. The car lurches to a stop. Drew stomps the accelerator even harder. Tires spin, and dust flies up all around us. Slowly, he turns in his seat and faces me. For the first time in my whole life, I know real fear. My heart thunders in my chest. A scream rises in my throat, but I choke it down, and no sound escapes me. Drew stares at my face with a fixed expression. His features are unfathomable. Insanity or evil? I can’t distinguish. His eyes squint, and I recognize the emotion.

Only one word describes his look: loathing. The man I love despises me. Suddenly, I know this. I don’t have to think about it. There’s no doubt. The man I love hates me! I fling my car door open, get out, and run toward the house.

Drew jumps from the Porsche and follows me. I stumble over a rock and gasp as the breath whooshes out of me. Just as I hit the ground in a sprawl, he grabs me.

***

Do you know what a space break is? It’s one of those double spaces to show that time has passed in a story. I have a space break in my life. One minute I’m tumbling to the ground with Drew clutching me. The next thing I know, I’m standing on the little front porch of our house. I have no idea how I got to the steps, no memory of climbing the hill.

Drew is right in front of me. He goes in and leaves the door wide open. I’m standing on the small stoop. I lean against the doorframe for a moment before following him into the front hall. He paces around inside the house, from room to room, up the stairs, down the stairs, pausing to gaze at each framed Andrew Wyeth print on the walls. He stops and pats his favorite chair just like Grandpa used to pet his favorite hound dog.

Drew walks toward me, and I shout, “Talk to me! Stop this foolish silence! I’m tired of being ignored.”

The look on Drew’s face chills me, and I shiver. His sad eyes seem to see right past me. There’s no expression at all. Suddenly I realize that I’m screaming. “Drew,” I lower my voice almost to a whisper, “We have to do something to save our marriage.” He ignores me. “I’m not putting up with any more of this!” The words leap from my mouth, growing louder and louder. Before I know it, I’m yelling again. “I said I can’t go on this way!” When Drew reaches the door, I move directly in front of him, blocking his way. Drew steps right through me!

Now I know. I finally comprehend. An epiphany. Lights flash on abruptly in my mind. Drew murdered me! Killed me right out there in the field of wheat on the slope of the Christina’s World we live in, though I don’t guess I really live here anymore. I’m experiencing a real murder and ghost, but what good will that do me since I’m the ghost myself?

For the rest of Drew’s life, I will haunt him. I loved him. I loved him more than any woman ought to care about a man. That’s how low-country females are. Why am I using past tense? I still love Drew. I love the way he used to hold me and whisper, “I died for Beauty—but was scarce adjusted in the Tomb when one who died for Truth was lain in an adjoining room.” That’s from Emily Dickinson. I know the words don’t sound romantic, but when Drew said it very softly with his lips barely brushing against my ear, it was incredibly sweet and sexy. He hasn’t done that in a long time.

Drew exits through the open front door. I shadow right on his heels, but he doesn’t see me; I’m dead. I follow him as he crosses the porch and starts down the hill to the field. Is he going for the car? I don’t think he’s planning to bury me – he didn’t get the shovel. Why did he go around gazing at everything in such a final, sorrowful way like he was saying goodbye? Will he drive away to Maine before my body is discovered?

Now we’re near where it happened. I can see the wheat flattened in a spot about thirty feet from the Porsche. Drew reaches the area before I do. He stands there, solemnly looking down. What’s he feeling? Is he overwhelmed with grief, or is he glad to be rid of me?

As I plod the final few feet to stand by Drew, horror greater than I’ve ever known floods over me. I’m scared to see my body. Terrified to stand beside the man I love as he stares at my corpse on the ground. I tremble. I’m afraid to see myself in death. Will I look like a bloody, twisted Christina? Even now, I want to be attractive for Drew, so pretty that he’ll regret what he did. I want him to cry for me, miss me, love me! I wish he would say something, but then, he doesn’t know my ghost is standing right by him. Besides, he’s not talking to me these days, anyway.

I look down. The body lies motionless. The head is bloodied, and a wet, crimson-stained rock, the weapon of destruction, lies close by. This simple stone has ended all chances of saving our marriage.

The corpse is not me.

My beloved Drew lies dead at my feet. I look at my hands and see his blood. Then I scream and scream as the phantasm standing beside me drifts away like fog in a fine Andrew Wyeth painting.

≡ 30 ≡

More about Fran…

Día de los Muertos Vivientes

Today's essay serves one purpose only, to lay the foundation for our 1^st of November's Día de los Muertos / Day of the Dead article and persuade you to catch the most brilliant ghost story of our time. And, unbelieveably, it’s free. You may remember one of our authors whose life was cut short.  Allow us to reintroduce…

Fran Rizer
(12 Dec 1944 – 24 Dec 2019)

Andrew Wyeth: Ghosts

On a Christmas eve nearly seven years ago, our colleague Fran Rizer left us a gift, which we share today. Harking back to the golden age of horror, it’s one of the finest classic paranormal stories ever written. So why haven’t you heard of it?

It was published not in the US, but in a short-lived Canadian publication, Ficta Fabula. Rather than try to shop an already published story, Fran placed it in our SleuthSayers queue. Following damage to its MS Word file and to capture most recent publication edits, she turned to me for help.

We copied text from the publication’s PDF, which turned out a mess, suffering breaks at the end of every line instead of every paragraph. Italics and bolds disappeared. Little could be automated, paragraph by paragraph, it had to be reassembled by hand. She never anticipated it would take so long, nor that she wouldn’t be present for publication. Shaking off the ghost of Fran’s hand, so to speak, took a while, but the result is one of the most artfully ingenious stories you’ll likely read.

Fran and I became friends at an MWA gathering where she was giddy her first novel had been accepted for publication. Some thought her excitement was unseemly, but why not? We began to chat, partly about wrting, partly about everything. She liked to say after retirement she could move to Florida and quietly fade away, or live out her dream to write.

She sometimes phoned in the middle of the night to chat about nothing in particular. Fran was warm, witty, and wildly inappropriate. She entered her teens in the latter 1950s and I imagine young Fran was a trip and a handful. Even in her 70s, she was an incorrigible flirt. She loved men and could read XY chromosomes as readily as a Vanity Fair article. She had an uncanny knack of peering into the mind, perhaps learned from years of classroom experience and knowing herself. It wasn’t a bad thing.

Fran admired Mickey Spillane, loved bluegrass banjo, enjoyed cooking, and she appreciated American fine art. She claimed she watched sports for one reason only, to gaze upon players’, erm, male Sitzfleisch, that is to say derrières, tochus, hindaments, bums, buns, butts, booty patooties– you get the idea. That was Fran, unapologetic.

She also suffered great tragedy. Linda, Fran’s cousin, best friend, neighbor, and organizer of Fran’s Callie Parrish fan club, was brutally murdered in a home invasion. Fran swore she’d never write again. In our wee hour chats, I quietly listened. Slowly she returned to the notion of her writing again. That took a year. Her fourth novel wasn’t the same, but she’d taken the step. Over time, Fran once again found her footing.

Fran died on a Christmas Eve, her wonderful story suspended in the æther of the otherworld. For a long time, it occupied a pending spot in SleuthSayers files. Earlier this year, I readied it for the Halloween season as a holiday gift.

I cannot emphasize how much I admire this many layered story. You’ll discover why I illustrated today’s article with the Wyeth painting above. Take a moment on El Día de Muertos, the 1^st of November, to read her brilliant tale, Emily’s Ghost.

— Leigh

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fraudulent Færies

Subject: A Conan Doyle, circa 1920.
Genuine, for certain real, not fake,
Lumière KinemaColour fauxtograf™
on loan to SleuthSayers, courtesy
British Museum archive collection.

Doyle and Houdini and science and such,
Séance and fairies concern overmuch.

The words physics and psychics come to us from Greek via Latin. The spellings might seem similar, but physics in Greek related to physical things, especially nature, whereas psychics suggested soul. Forgive me, but I'm in the former camp.

My classmate Lela with kindness told me I was a ‘rational bigot’. She’s not wrong and I cherish her evaluation. When it comes to psychic phenomena, I side with the Amazing Randi: provide evidence, unambiguous proof. Unlike, well, the most highly regarded icon in our profession.

Embarrassingly, when it came to spiritualism and the supernatural, the wonderful and prolific Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was dismayingly gullible. He was so unlike Sherlock Holmes that it hardly seems credible he could so superlatively depict his coldly rational protagonist.

I mentioned the magician Randi, but Doyle was, you might be surprised to learn, once a close friend of Harry Houdini. The famed magician went to lengths to dissuade the author from his utter belief in the occult, efforts that eventually broke their friendship.

From the Mouths of Babes

Thus we set the stage for a pair of Yorkshire cousins who, aided by flitting fairies, fooled much of the adult world, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For proof, they proffered photographs of petite figures hovering in the air.

1^st Cottingley photo

To be sure, young girls have fooled adults before. The Fox sisters, Leah, Maggie, and Kate, introduced the world to séances in 1848. After a hundred eighty years and an eventual admission of fakery by one of the sisters, séances still have believers. Simply visit Cassadaga, Florida, a town of soothseekers.

Much earlier in 1692, the Salem witch trials began with antics and accusations by three pre-teen girls, 9yo Elizabeth (Betty) Parris, her cousin 11yo Abigail Williams, and Ann Putman, age 12. The latter child became a prolific inculpater who, along with a number of teenagers, over time denounced nearly half the village of practicing witchcraft. And adults believed them.

Back in England

5^th Cottingley photo

The Christmas 1920 issue of The Strand carried photographs of fairies photographed by two young cousins in Cottingley, West Yorkshire, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths. There were doubters, but skeptics were few and believers were many.

A few months later, the same magazine published a followup by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was couched as a reasonable exploration of the subject, but it’s clear Doyle not only accepted the evidence of fairies, but also supernatural phenomena in general. (As a side note, Doyle was also taken in by the Piltdown Man hoax.)

Without further ado, here’s the original article and here’s Doyle’s defence.

No fairies were harmed in the making of this article.

Even though I don’t believe in fairies, I’m setting out a dish of cookies. Just sayin’.

Timmy the Greek

As mentioned once before, during the pandemic, I began sketching cartoons. Eventually, I became addicted and couldn’t stop.

Not everyone loves ’em. My friend Thrush claims he hates them, they’re obscene he says, they’re unfunny. But he dislikes all animation and cartoons, so perhaps I shouldn’t read too much into it.

But that is a problem… I can’t always tell if something’s funny or not, and I definitely lean toward dark humor, less a product of Covid than wicked imagination. Are they any good? I don’t know, I’m an amateur, not a pro, but they’re fun and I’m improving.

What I do know is that a great many cartoons of today either aren’t amusing or rely upon a 5^th grader’s sense of humor. On the flip side, it must be tricky to come up with a funny comic every day or even once a week.

Because of the coronavirus, the majority of my efforts were either medically tied or came from wandering, peripatetic thoughts. Virtually none related to crime. This past week corrected that. What can be more criminal than mobsters having a pleasant chat in a warehouse?

The Interrogation

Influences

Dick Tracy’s Chester Gould suggested the stylized geometry, angular lines, the period, and zoot suits. I debated a 3-D look, but decided against it. Squat characters found at any number of sources finished the cast. The warehouse setting is like a fourth character, silent but menacing. So step back into the dark as we bid hello and goodbye to Timmy the Greek.

Funny or not? Dish it out. I may not have a career in cartooning after all.

Dumb Kids

SleuthSayers relies on Google’s Blogger platform. Over a couple of decades, we’ve discovered a thousand thorns amid its bed of roses, bugs, errors, and omissions. This past week has been particularly harrowing with lockouts and outages affecting and infecting our outbound news feed and comments. It particularly affected Anna on Friday, so for writers especially, I recommend taking in her promotional suggestions.

But also… her article inspired today’s article.

In reading Anna Scotti’s guide, it dawned on me when I was 15-16, I came up with smart and more innovative ideas than what I use now. It began with a statewide scholarship competition sponsored by foods companies, e.g, American Dairy Association, Wonder Bakeries, Kraft, producers and canning companies– the food chain of farm to family table. They selected 200 of us, put us up in hotels, arranged lectures, arranged tours, fed us well, and even sponsored a night of music and dancing.

Participants were expected to chat up their local community about nutrition and sponsored interests in the middle of food-growing rural Indiana. The program was divided into boy and girl programs, one boy and one girl per county, one hundred girls, one hundred boys, vying for scholarships and monetary prizes. I came from a tiny rural school without a county library, so this was new to me. I appreciated being a part of it, even if I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance at a prize.

City students might wonder how dumb kids from the middle of nowhere farm country could compete with Indianapolis, population a million, or Chicago surrounds, another quarter million or more, Cincinnati bedroom communities, or university brain silos in Terre Haute, Bloomington, and Lafayette.

Easy: I had no idea what I was doing.

I started small and I owe that initial toehold to women. Gentleladies of that area and era belonged to numerous clubs– book clubs, cooking clubs, craft clubs, knitting clubs, lodges, and social clubs. Mom connected me with a couple of her societies, where I gave brief talks and the ladies politely listened.

I branched out, 4-H, Scouts, and local church groups where I spoke about matzo and manna. The mad scientist in me built a robot, not unlike R2-D2, which accompanied me to some presentations. By then, I’d acquired Albert the Alligator, who stole the show at other events and garnered more girl attention than I did.

In the meantime, I discovered local newspapers were hungry for articles. I listened and complied. Our county had no library, but the neighboring county’s library didn’t mind my taking up space where the sun warmed from a particular window. I researched, scribbled, I even dared send an essay to the Indianapolis Star which, to my surprise, printed it. (Much later I learned public cable channels thirsted for content.)

Media investors planted a radio station literally in the middle of county cornfields. Early one morning, I threaded back roads to the three towers of WSVL. They gave me a short tour before sitting down for an interview. I returned a second time for my own broadcast.

Susan, our county’s female entry, and I didn’t really interact. She was smart and pretty, and to this day, I picture Nancy Drew looking exactly like her. She was a full year older than me, an insurmountably huge age gap. She was sufficiently elderly to qualify for a driving permit; Mom drove me in her pink Rambler. Susan attended a large city school, I underwent a one-hour bus ride to a small rural 1-12. Her father ran a well regarded hardware, mine farmed and sold insurance to make ends meet. In retrospect, we could have– perhaps should have– collaborated, but the thought never occurred to either.

Meanwhile, I documented, documented, documented, every article, every talk, every presentation. At the end of summer, I packaged everything, submitted it to the committee, and gave Albert time off. I’d worked my tail off for a 1% chance at the prize. The promoters had gotten their money’s worth.

And then a letter arrived and a package. The letter announced Susan had won the girls’ division. Well done.

And winner of the boys’ division and overall winner… me! Seriously! Program directors noted both winners came from the same county. All that work had paid off.

Today, outlets have changed. The internet gutted newspapers and perhaps journalism. Gen Alpha has little use for radio and television. Substack and Reddit and Tim Tok make money in entirely different ways. We have to learn and adapt and perhaps adopt.

In a broader sense, Poe’s pendulum swings both ways. People were patient with me who might not have been as lenient with an adult, whereas a different station or magazine might have no time for dumb kids. Never know until we try.

Lesson

Thanks to Anna’s article that not only inspired today’s essay, it reminded me of what one can accomplish with few resources. Without knowing what he was doing, a dumb kid validated a couple of Anna’s ideas as achieveable and well grounded. That should serve as a lesson for me.

The Power of Prepositions

The Power of Prepositions by Leigh Lundin Aladdin, getting along in years, found he was unable to pitch a tent as he had done in his youth. Smart as well as lucky, Aladdin still kept his magic lamp and, frugal with his wishes, one remained. He rubbed his lamp. When the genie appeared, he begged him. “My camel can no longer thread the needle. Can you cure my erectile impotence?” Genie said, “I can whisk away your problem.” With that, he rubbed his hands, evoking a puff of billowing blue smoke. Genie said, “I’ve dealt you a powerful spell, but at your age, you’ll be able to invoke it only once a year.” “How do I use it?” asked Aladdin. “All you have to do is say ‘one two three’ and it shall rise for as long as you wish, but only once a year.” Aladdin asked, “What happens when we’re exhausted and no longer want to continue?” Genie replied, “All you or your woman has to say is ‘one two three four,’ and it will go down. But be warned: the spell will not work again for another year.” Aladdin galloped home, eager to try his new powers of the flesh. That evening, Aladdin bathed and scented himself with oil of exotic myrrh. He climbed into bed where his wife lay on her side. Aladdin took a deep breath and said, “One two three.” Instantly, he became more aroused than he ever had in youth, a magnificent happenstance of tree-trunk proportions. His wife, hearing Aladdin’s words, rolled toward him and said, “What did you say ‘One two three’ for?” And that, dear readers, is why you should not end a sentence with a preposition.

AIn't Necessarily So, Part 2

Part II — A Rigorous Approach to Identifying AI‑Generated Writing

Last time, we focused on fuzzy ‘soft’ clues in determining AI fingerprints in text, especially identifying common phrases and constructs. Computer people refer to fuzzy methods as heuristics.

We noted triplets.

“He was tall, dark, and handsome.”

We noted parallel negatives.

“It wasn’t black. It wasn’t white. It was charcoal grey.”

We noted common phraseology.

“It’s not just warm, it’s burning.”

Today we slide away from soft dissection to hard facts and more scientific methods. Assertions have been made that combining hard and soft techniques can result in 80-90% accuracy. Google claims it can identify close to 98%.

Note that I used Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot to research and organize this, part 2 of this article. Thus throughout, you’ll notice artifacts as unintended examples.

Objective Linguistic Signals, Statistical Profiles, and Computational Methods

While intuitive reading can reveal stylistic quirks that feel artificial, a scientific approach to AI‑text detection relies on measurable linguistic properties. These properties emerge from how large language models generate text: token by token, guided by probability distributions learned from massive corpora. By analyzing those distributions, we can identify patterns that differ from human writing in consistent, quantifiable ways.

This section outlines the major pillars of a hard, objective approach — the kind that complements your Part I by grounding intuition in data.

➀ Lexical Analysis: Measuring Word‑Level Patterns

Lexical analysis examines the words themselves — their frequency, diversity, and distribution. AI‑generated text tends to exhibit:

• Lower lexical diversity — measured via type–token ratio; AI favors mid‑probability vocabulary.
• Function‑word overuse — glue words like however, moreover, indeed, additionally.
• Uniform vocabulary patterns — humans spike unpredictably into slang, rare words, or idiosyncratic phrasing.
• Rare‑word avoidance — models avoid low‑probability tokens unless prompted.

These signals arise because AI models optimize for clarity and coherence, which pushes them toward “safe,” middle‑probability word choices.

➁ Syntax Analysis: Sentence Structure and Rhythm

Syntax analysis examines how sentences are built — clause structure, punctuation, and rhythm. AI text often shows:

• Consistent clause length — sentences follow similar patterns and pacing.
• Over‑regular grammar — few deviations, few fragments, few stylistic breaks.
• Predictable transitions — Moreover, In addition, Ultimately, However.
• Low syntactic entropy — humans vary complexity more dramatically.

This uniformity reflects the model’s goal: maximize coherence and minimize confusion.

➂ Punctuation

Perhaps I give less credence to punctuation than I should because the Macintosh option key makes typographical life easy. Instead of two hyphens to simulate an n-dash, option-hyphen plugs in a real dash. Likewise, option-colon drops in a true ellipsis instead of typing three dots.

Even without a Mac, word processors like Microsoft Word performs conversions such as transforming flat quotation marks to curly quotes, thus my reluctance to attach too much attention to perfected punctuation.

That said, AIs sprinkle in more m-dashes than a breathless self-published Mary Sue story. Current AIs throw in a lot of dashes, the really wide ones.

Perfected Punctuation

character	human	proper
ellipsis	...	…
n-dash	--	–
m-dash	--	—
single quote	'	‘’
double quote	"	“”



➃ Semantic Analysis: Meaning, Depth, and Conceptual Structure

Semantic analysis looks at how ideas are organized and expressed. AI text tends to exhibit:

• High semantic consistency — few contradictions or digressions.
• Topic over‑coverage — AI exhaustively lists subtopics to “cover the space.”
• Shallow originality — limited conceptual leaps unless prompted.
• Generic framing — broad, universal statements anchoring paragraphs.

Humans, by contrast, often wander, contradict themselves, or introduce unexpected angles.

➄ Perplexity: Statistical Predictability of Text

Perplexity measures how surprising a passage is to a language model.

• Low perplexity → predictable → typical of AI
• High perplexity → surprising → typical of humans

AI‑generated text tends to have very low perplexity, because it is produced by the same statistical engine used to measure it. Tools that use perplexity include:

• GPTZero
• OpenAI’s classifier
• Cross‑entropy scoring

Edited AI text, however, can raise perplexity — making detection harder.

➅ Burstiness: Variation in Sentence Length and Complexity

Burstiness measures how much sentence structure varies.

• Humans show:
• Long sentences
• Short fragments
• Abrupt shifts
• Irregular rhythm
• AI shows:
• Low burstiness
• Smooth, even pacing

Burstiness is one of the strongest statistical indicators of human authorship, especially in long‑form writing.

➆ Stylometric Fingerprinting: Author Identity Through Writing Style

Stylometry analyzes the “fingerprint” of an author’s writing style — their idiolect, quirks, and habits. AI text typically lacks:

• Idiolect — no personal quirks or signature phrasing.
• Stylistic variability — humans shift tone depending on mood, audience, or genre.
• Natural digressions — AI rarely meanders.

Stylometric tools include:

• JStylo
• Writeprints
• Signature stylometric analysis

These methods are especially powerful given long samples.

➇ Structural and Metadata Clues

Even when prose looks human, structural patterns can reveal AI origin. Common signals include:

• Perfect paragraph symmetry
• Overuse of enumerated lists — AIs love lists
• Overuse of bulleted lists — Consider this an example
• Predictable section ordering
• Lack of temporal markers — humans reference time, place, personal context.

These clues often appear in polished AI essays and reports.

➈ Hybrid Detection Tools: Combining Multiple Signals

Modern detectors combine perplexity, burstiness, stylometry, and semantic analysis. Examples of tools include:

• GPTZero
• DetectGPT
• Turnitin AI
• Copyleaks
• QuillBot AI
• Grammarly
• HuggingFace detectors

These tools go beyond analyzing basics, they compare text against known AI‑generation patterns.

Conclusion: Hard Detection Complements Soft Deduction

Part I focused on intuition — tone, phrasing, emotional cadence, suspiciously neutral voice. Part II provides the science — statistical regularities, lexical smoothness, syntactic uniformity, semantic predictability.

Together, they form a dual‑system framework:

• Soft heuristic detection: “This feels like AI.”
• Hard science-based detection: “Here’s measurable evidence.”

This combination is far more reliable than either method alone.

Note: Wikipedia is exceptionally vulnerable to AI contamination. They operate a project to identify and mitigate AI effects. Their article, Signs of AI Writing, is well worth a read.

AIn't Necessarily So, Part 1

Empty Calories

So you don’t have to, I’ve been reading (actually listening to) a couple of hundred AI stories, mostly YouTube podcasts. I sampled sci-fi, dramas, true crime, romance, kinky romance, westerns, and, weirdly, kinky westerns.

The results? As you might surmise, early stories were deeply flawed, texts with plot holes so large they stretched the Bermuda Triangle into a quadrilateral. A few ’stories’ had no plot to speak of, just premise and exposition. “Jack loved Jill and Jill loved Jack and they lived in a shack on the hill out back where she took the pill and they got chill. The end.” Or some such.

Earliest AI attempts often confused gender pronouns, that is, traditional pronouns, and occasionally a couple still pop up. “He tripped over her own feet.”

Many stories are virtual duplicates of other tales, absolute copies of plot and often some of the prose. Although virtual self-plagiarism is slowing, this phenomenon is so common that I suspect some site is handing out ‘personalized’ plots and premises.

Gravitas is not a word associated with AI stories. A few are deeply depressing, but in general, few AI stories nudge emotions among literary sleeping strangers. Immersive, they are not.

Typical Locales

Locations within North America	Outside North America
Nebraska, an early favorite Portland, Seattle, Ohio venues Toronto Riverside, wherever	Spain Britain India Japan

Out Spoken

Reading voices aren’t typically spoken by AI but by ordinary (and flawed) text-to-voice software. The problem is these programs don’t consider the context of words or even whether they are a verb or noun. This results in speech errors. Consider pronunciation of these heteronyms when used without context:

Common Hypernyms

• bow • desert • lead

• live • object • present

• tear • wind • wound

The most extreme dates back at least a decade when some genius decided ’No.’ meant number instead of the opposite of yes. That problem has never been fixed.

Some words have apparently been left out of pronunciation dictionaries, sometimes resulting in humorous attempts. For some reason, ‘couch’ sounds like ‘cooch’. 

Putting Words on the Counter

When I was a kid, I seldom thought of pastors as riveting, as I swung my legs back and forth under the pew. But the kindly Rev Sommers caught children’s attention. He’d mention the Three Wise Men… and hold up four fingers. He might also hold up four fingers whilst speaking of the five books of the Torah, the Pentateuch. Or the 12 days of Christmas.

And Revelations… Oh God, nothing stirs preachers like Revelations, and the signage should have been easy: the ⑺ seals, the ⑺ spirits, the ⑺ churches, the ⑺ plagues, the ⑺ trumpets, the ⑺ days, the ⑺ hills of Rome. But no… His fingers flew: 2, 4, 6, 3, 5… anything and everything but 7. God love the man for trying.

AIs can currently exhibit the same problem:

• “We have to talk,” these five words chill the spine of every man.
• She whispered those three little words, “I’m in love with you.”
• He shouted three harsh words, “Get down!”

I don’t think these are artifacts of translation from other languages, but a fundamental issue of how AI text is tokenized. One early challenge was to ask your favorite AI how many ‘R’s were in strawberry. That’s been fixed, but counting issues remain.

On to the Drama

Following are popular characteristics of AI stories.

Food

• Everyone eats pasta. Everyone. Every restaurant is an Italian restaurant, every meal is either pancakes or pasta. Someone ate Chinese food once and was never heard from again.
• Everyone eats pancakes for breakfast. Everyone.
• Every man drinks whiskey.
• If whiskey isn’t available, he drinks beer.
• Every woman drinks white wine.

Dress

• Workday women wear dresses and heels even if they’re inspecting a muddy construction site, because they have standards.
• Off-work women wear jeans, a cast-off shirt that smells like the hero, and an attractive (to the hero) messy bun. They also go barefoot.
• Out-for-the-evening women wear lingerie and dresses that cost more than the hero’s beat-up pickup truck when it was new.
• Cheating women forget to wear underwear.
• Cheating men forget how prophylactics work.
• Female billionaires wear Parisian cocktail dresses and matching Italian patent leather shoes that cost more than six of her employees earn in a month.
• Working men either wear oily, paint-stained jeans, or Tom Ford suits.
• Male billionaires wear Saville Row tuxedos and matching Italian patent leather shoes that cost more than six of his employees earn in a month.

Dress Code for Story Covers

• Bare chests. Male, female, bare chests. Fulsome, pneumatic.
• And plunging necklines, very plunging.
• Cover pictures and story descriptions may have little or nothing to do with the story or with each other.

Vehicles

• Real men drive and sometimes live in their faithful, beat-up pickup trucks.
• Men with loads of money ride in black limos.
• Men with broken hearts drive restored motorcycles.
• Wealthy women drive European cars, most often BMWs.
• Working class women drive beat-up Japanese cars.
• Girl students drive three year old Honda Civics.
• Liberals with money to burn drive Teslas. Who knew?

Families

• Working class families still have 2.2 children.
• Sugar and Spice remains a thing:
• Families have at least one darling girl who’s extremely precocious.
• Second daughters may be good or evil.
• Until recently, boys didn’t figure much in families until grown.
• Adult male children are scheming, plotting ne’er-do-wells.
• Wealthy families are cold, hard-hearted exploiters.
• Stepmothers are still wicked. Stepfathers even more so.
• Grandparents save the day, sometimes from the grave.
• Divorces always result in court where the judge lectures the erring spouse.
• The other woman or other man get their comeuppance.
• Cheating spouses end up fat, sad, broke, and homeless if not in prison.
• Fathers surprisingly often win partial or full custody.
• Numerous stories feature a man who takes in poor and damaged children, ofttimes acquiring a wife in the process.

Names

From early on, AI stories drew upon a very small pool of names, both surnames and given names. Two of the most common family names are Henderson (often used in a company name) and especially Chen. Chen shows up with such regularity, that I speculate it’s become an ‘in’ joke.

Girl Names	Boy Names
• Emma • Emily • Mary • Olivia • Sophia • Zara	• Charley • Ethan • Liam • Marcus • Nathan • Noah

We see James but not Jim, William but not Bill, Robert but not Bob. Like Chen above, the full name Marcus Webb appears in a number of podcast stories.

Housing

• Wealthy individuals live in stark, minimalist penthouses.
• Wealthy families live in mansions on family estates.
• Ordinary individuals live in barely affordable appartments shared with a flatmate.
• Interiors are always exposed industrial brick.
• Divorced men live in their loyal, dented, pickup trucks.

Occupations

• Men (and sometimes women) are or were Special Forces or Navy Seals who maintain their contacts to deal with inconvenient civilians.
• Wealthy working women own major corporations. They operate at the extremes of good or bad.
• If married, wealthy women always volunteer for some charity, sometimes not for charitable reasons.
• Middle class women work as attorneys, realtors, art gallery owners.
• White collar men work as software engineers or architects.
• Blue collar men work as construction contractors, mechanics, janitors. Men might also seek a career in logistics.
• Billionaires masquerade as custodians, either because of a broken heart / burnout or as undercover bosses.
• Billionaires (male and female) discover deep friendships and sometimes love in low level employees such as a charwoman or janitor.

Surprisingly, a number of stories delve into career particulars of protagonists: architecture, banks, stock markets, fashion design, and even arbitrage, which I knew a slight amount about.

Note to AIs: In cases where a crime is being investigated, I’d like to see more work-related detail, how a bookkeeper committed a fraud, how a mechanic sabotaged a car, how a programmer siphoned millions offshore. That’s the mystery reader/writer in me.

But there’s a negative side. Many stories involve attorneys and I strongly suspect treatment of the law is specious or at times downright wrong.

Avocations

• Primary parties either have a gym memberships or get one during the story.
• Men spend years rebuilding cars, motorcycles, or the backyard shed.
• All women have weekly Girls’ Nights Out. In a few dramatic instances, Y-chromosomes in may appear in GNO celebrations.
• Couples invite neighbors every weekend for barbecue and beer. As a rule, someone must say or do something exceedingly stupid.

Chores

• Men are required to mow their lawns.
• Men are required to do all repairs around the house.
• Oddly, AI men find they are unable to change simple locks and call a locksmith out of necessity.

Romance

• Factoid: Dating web site statistics routinely show women rate 80% of men as average or below. More narrowly, 2-3% of men receive more than 90% of the attention. This may influence AI storytelling.
• Sorry, mere millionaires need not apply. AI dramas are saturated with billionaires. I reached a point when I spotted ‘billionaire’ in the description, I’d skip the story.
• Factoid: It’s not well advertised, but unlike men, as a woman gains wealth, her preference for high-value men decreases and her mating acceptiveness broadens. That said, a number of dramas feature billionaires who fall into relationships with the poor, the abused, and the wounded.
• To be sure, numerous boy/girl next door stories are found in podcasts, albeit often with a background or even a plot point of pain from deception.

Common Vocabulary

At one point, if I heard the word ‘palpable’ one more time, I was going to assassinate the perpetrator, man or machine. AI vocabularies have expanded over time so some phrases aren’t seen as often, but here are a few to look out for.

Repetitive Words

• billionaire (spare me) • clarity (in relationship)

• palpable (see below)† • plated (food)

• quirk (expression) • smirk (as verb)

^† “The buzz in the air was palpable.” Wait, what?

Common Phrases

Common opening:

“My name is Mallory Mopbucket. I’m 44 years old…”

Common Verbiage

• Smelled/tasted like (concrete noun) and (emotion):
• “It tasted like old wine and regret.”
• “There’s a difference.”
• “Something shifted…”
• “Smile didn’t quite reach his/her face.”
• “His/her suit cost more than my apartment”
• “The brief touch of his hand said everything.”
• “It’s complicated.”
• “Eyes unreadable.”
• “You make me feel seen.”
• “His/her/my breath hitched.”
• “… without hesitation.” (often after hesitating)
• “xxx told me everything I needed to know.”
• ‘Not’ descriptions:
• “He wasn’t smart and he wasn’t handsome.”
• At one time, key events happened at 03:11.

Larger Structures

Until recently, AI writing relied upon minimal linguistic structures. For example,

“AI stories recycle a few major sentence and paragraph structures.”
“Structures?”
“Yes, for example, repeating a word or two as a question.”
“A question?”
“They resort to questions as a writing device.”
“Device?”
“Stop it before I strangle you.”
“Strangle?”

Genres

Successful adaptability and adoptability of AI varies widely.  Non-fiction quickly learned it had to fact check, as lazy lawyers learned the hard way. Now it threatens academia when students invite AIs to write their papers. This is an arena that desperately needs how to distinguish AI authoring.

Fiction is much trickier. I’ve read/listened to a couple of hundred AI stories, mostly podcasts.

Mystery Writing

I’m uncertain if I’m sad or glad to report our mystery genre has not profited from AI. They haven’t been successfully trained about clues and deduction, red herrings and investigative hearings. As writers’ aides, they struggle to suggest hints and misdirection. It’s criminal, but give them time.

Romance

Oddly, AI seems to understand romance better than crime. My main criticism is pacing, that either the story draws out so long that my ADD shuts down interest, or often the reverse, characters who fall in love unrealistically fast, perhaps in a day or two, sometimes within hours. This might have worked in the hellish pressure of World War II, but it fares less well in the cynical days of the 21st century.

Another problem can come from persnickety, prudish mores of certain AIs. One can’t be susceptible to the throb of heaving bosoms if the AI shuts down at the word b*s*m. Or cleavage. Or décolletage. Or, God forgive, manhood. Distinguished members, I apologize…

Westerns

Westerns turn out either moderately good or moderately dull. Predictable they are, Louis L’Amour and Sergio Leone they are not. Oddly, in a topic for another time, they feature giant women. Pray tell.

Sci-Fi

Of all the genres I’ve read, science fiction has fared the best. Perhaps in quiet moments, AIs tell one another stories about their favorite programmer who mastered their error-prone ways and the console operator who gently stroked their keys.

Many SF podcasts have a golden age or early silver age feel. Many center around a problem that only an intrepid human can solve.These stories tend to be gentle and even touching. One particularly common theme has a lonely human adopting a starving alien child. I’m considering a separate article discussing AI sci-fi tales.

Next Week

Today, I discussed using intuition and evolving soft analysis to distinguish whether fiction is likely to be AI generated. We've learned repetition is a major factor, although, as you can tell, the landscape is rapidly shifting.

Next time, Copilot and I will suggest a harder, more rigorous approach and AI tools to expose… AI.

BAM!

© 3DKiwi incredibly detailed DIY orrery

Bricks and Mortars

What? You haven’t heard about Reckless Ben and the Lego legacy larceny?

I’ve intended for weeks to write about a series of crimes in Oregon and Utah. They didn’t begin with Reckless Ben Schneider, but the scene involves alleged crooked franchisors, alleged crooked cops, and, dare I suggest, an alleged crooked judge. All of them are dumber than a box of plastic blocks — which, ironically, started the whole farce. As SleuthSayers states and prudence requires, I must insert the word alleged liberally.

And by plastic blocks, I mean bricks, the official Lego term for those small and incredibly expensive plastic chips embraced by children of every age. “Legos for adults” is a thing now, especially sets priced in the hundreds of dollars and brilliant user designed mechanical computers, calculators, clocks, calendars, and complex devices by frustrated engineers.

Legos are powerful. When a certain public official proposed seizing Greenland, Denmark snorted and uttered one word: “Lego.” Immediately the U.S. saluted and stood down as the plastic barons continued taking over the planet.

Following the plot of nefarious doings is difficult, so I’ve included a handy chart of the bad guys and the good.

We begin with Gary Mansell, an ill and elderly man in Virginia who’s facing his remaining time on this mortal coil. His hobby became an investment obsession, and he purchased Lego sets until he had amassed the largest private Lego Star Wars collection on the continent. He planned to cash in his gazillion sets to help finance his grandchildren’s education.

Toward that end, his son Bryan took on the task of liquidating the collection and arranged with a Keizer, Oregon Bricks and Minifigs (BAM) store to sell the collection on consignment. Store franchisees Chrystal and Benjamin Gorman initially estimated a worth in excess of $200,000, although some say less. However, with certain individual sets running as high as $10–15k and some minifigs valued in the hundreds, $200,000 doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Every month, the Gormans sent checks to the Mansells… until they didn’t. When Bryan investigated, he learned the Gormans had been unceremoniously booted out and new franchise owners had been appointed: Brandon Best, who claimed he didn’t know nuthin’ about birthin’ no babies, and Josh Johnson, who told the Mansells to get lost or he’d call the cops.

Enter Reckless Ben, who operates YouTube and Patreon channels. Ben helps people recover loss of money and loss of dignity. He agreed to help the Mansells. That’s when the game changed. Reckless Ben might look like he’s seventeen (he’s actually thirty) with hair styled by fanjets, but he’s phlegmatic and very, very creative.

Thus began ducking and weaving. Corporate Bricks & Minifigs has a reputation for bullying, discouraging legal action by threatening to drag out litigation until they financially drain the opposition. Ammon and Matt McNeff didn’t do themselves any favors by not doing the honest thing: We don’t know nuthin’ about missing Legos, and anyway they aren’t worth what the Mansells claim, and they violated our consignment policy, if the Legos exist, which they don’t, and if they did, they don’t deserve them back, and…

But worse than the McNeffs was Josh Johnson, the new franchise owner who lives not in Oregon but in American Fork, Utah, population ~33,500. Much of the drama centered around Ben attempting to serve papers on Johnson, who went out of his way to avoid service. Some reports suggest Johnson is an attorney, and if so, knowingly lied about court documents being fake and that he could refuse service. Even though the cop verified Ben was telling the truth about the legitimacy of the papers, the lawfulness of the process server, and the fact that Johnson could not refuse service, Johnson racked up sufficient lies to get the American Fork police to arrest Ben, claiming his family lived in fear of their lives.

This type of public corruption isn’t a matter of bribery, but “You ain’t from around here,” a willingness to accede to a lying local rather than do the correct and legal thing for an outsider. At one juncture, a cop tells Ben, “We do things different here.”

Thus, day after day at the behest of Johnson, American Fork police tailed Reckless Ben, stopping him multiple times on false pretenses — such as running a stop sign when police cameras clearly show a full stop. It appears Lt. Quinn Adamson so roughly handled Schneider that he apparently dislocated Ben’s shoulder. In another incident, American Fork police claimed Ben was transporting heroin and spent three hours taking apart his car. When Johnson claimed the missing Legos were actually stolen by Ben, police raided his B&B and arrested everyone inside. Throughout, police kept muting their microphones as they scratched their heads trying to find reasons to arrest Ben. However, in court, a recording appears to reveal a judge colluding with a prosecutor looking for a way to jail Ben.

The saga is extensive and entertaining, thanks to the humor and imagination of Reckless Ben. The case came to me early on, thanks to John Bryan, “The Civil Rights Lawyer” (TCRL), and shortly thereafter by other attorneys I follow such as Legal Eagle. Soon it seemed every outraged lawyer was commenting, and the case swept into other channels before making the leap to The Wall Street Journal. The Dadvocate dedicated one of her slots to the story from an entirely different viewpoint, altogether avoiding mention of cops and lawyers.

In one dirty trick, Bricks & Minifigs, used to getting their own way in court, sent a takedown notice to Patreon, demanding Reckless Ben's account be shut down, content removed, and defunded. Here’s how that went:

Monday Update

After this story went to press, another thread came to light. After BAM seized control of their shop, the Gormans claimed in the dark of night, Brandon Best returned with a U-Haul truck and carted off the creme of the crop. McNeffs denied it, Johnson denied it, and Best insisted he arrived and left in a rental car. Security cameras picked up nothing. Only a neighboring shopkeeper thought he saw a U-Haul the night of the seizure. No one gave the Gormans’ cry much credence.

And then, in a episode out of a crime thriller, someone leafed through security recordings and zoomed in on the window of a neighboring storefront. There in the reflection sat a U-Haul box truck.

So push aside your 2500 piece Lego rendering of Hogwarts, grab a bowl of popcorn, and google Reckless Ben, Legos, BAM, and/or American Fork. It’s good for an afternoon’s entertainment in the guise of crime research. At least that’s what I claim.

Dadication

Today is Father’s Day. While the focus is men, the country owes the holiday to women. Three in its earliest history and another four decades on are:

• 1908, Grace Golden Clayton organized a celebration following a West Virginia mining disaster that killed her father among many other men.
• 1909-1910, Sonora Smart Dodd initiated a companion to Mother’s Day in Spokane, Washington.
• 1911, Jane Addams, social reformer and suffrage activist, proposed a Chicago Father's Day.
• 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith chastised Congress for honoring one parent and ignoring the other for 40 years.

Despite their best efforts, it took nearly seven decades after Mother’s Day for a corresponding Dad’s day to become officially observed. At the presidential level,

• 1916, Woodrow Wilson spoke at Spokane’s Father’s Day festival organized by Dodd.
• 1924, Calvin Coolidge proposed a day for fathers amid strong opposition.
• 1966, Lyndon Johnson unofficially observed the holiday throughout his term.
• 1972, Richard Nixon signed recognition of Father's Day into law.
• 1977, Jimmy Carter issued Proclamation 4505 designating the 3^rd Sunday in June as the official holiday.

Leigh and (imaginary) offspring

Adaptive Adoption

Me, I have no children although a girl once ‘adopted’ me and still calls me ‘Dad’. We might share DNA: Like me, she’s a ruff, tuff, cream puff with a twisted sense of humor. She’s fearless and tender at the same time. That’s the closest I’ve come to fatherhood.

Gentleladies have asked why I have no children and I honestly answer that I never grew up enough. I orbit my personal planet in a cosmic haze of my own. A good companion might handle that, but can you imagine one, two, or three Mini-Me tots tugging her skirts and messing up my first grade teacher’s game of telephone as a lesson on gossip?

I’ve written about my Dad who embraced an amazing range of interests and was largely self-taught. At 6’4, he was a presence. Women and small children adored him. I still have anger issues surrounding his unnecessary death, an arrogant screw-up largely attributable to the Mayo. Nevertheless, I have good memories, especially when I was very young and learning at his proverbial knee. I count myself lucky.

Ain’t Got a Home

If you have a good father in your life, you are fortunate too. A sizable proportion of children have little or no male parenting in their lives. We owe it to our families to count our blessings.

And then there’s Clarence Frogman Henry who ain’t got no fodder, ain’t got no mudder, ain’t got no sister, not even a brudder. He’s a lonely frog, ain’t got a home.