When Flying Saucers Attack!

[sdreid]

P.S.

Mike-I signed as well.

[Mike Covell]

It's a shame the Bounty no longer exsists, although there is a replica doing the rounds. She came to Hull last year, and the compnay behind her charged people to visit and she was locked away on one of the docks with tight security!

I have written to Hull City Council and asked that it be displayed in the Blaydes Family Drydock, but no response was ever recieved!

Thanks for signing Jeff and Stan.

[plang]

Got the door knocker from Captain Nelsons cabin that I ripped off the door last time I visited the HMS Victory way back in 1970. It is now on my door.
So sue me.

[Mike Covell]

I like your style Plang!

Historian admitted recently that the metal plaque were Nelson died on the Victory is in the wrong spot!!

I visited when I was a kid and although I was in awe at the ship, I could not be bothered to stand around a bit of metal in the rain!! I was only about 5!

[dougie]

Hi Jeff,

I hate to see something like that moved. It just isn't the same but it's better than tearing it down no doubt.

When I first watched One Step Beyond, it was new and called Alcoa Presents. It was one of those programs that was a topic of discussion at school the next day with the likes of Twilight Zone. The Alcoa Presents show was the one we all believed was "true". If they ever reran the program, I bet they wouldn't show the one where Newland did "shrooms" at the beginning of the episode and started hallucinating. It was supposed to be some experiment connected to ESP. I don't remember them ever doing anything connected to flying saucers.

I think the "one step beyond" i grew up watching might have been a different series altogether from the one mentioned here, which is american version im assuming......the british one was introduced by a guy called algernon blackwood (or was that the guy who produced it) prog always started with him in an armchair,odd looking guy, one look at him alone would put the fear of god in you ,gaunt, staring eyes and menacing he usd to say something after the fashion of " and we will now take you.....one step BEYOND" OOOOEEE OOOOO
REGARDS

[dougie]

Got the door knocker from Captain Nelsons cabin that I ripped off the door last time I visited the HMS Victory way back in 1970. It is now on my door.
So sue me.

It WAS on your door.....take a look now
regards

[sdreid]

Hi Dougie,

I didn't know there was another One Step Beyond. Yes, this was an American program but I don't remember what network it was on. These shows here were half hour dramatizations of supposedly true paranormal occurrences. As I said, One Step Beyond was not this program's original title although the narrator delivered that line at the end of his introduction.

[dougie]

STAN
It shows how the memory isnt always reliable and plays tricks, i searched on imdb for british version of one step beyond..it seems there wasnt one however i found the series (i think) it was called "mystery and imagination" and this guy algernon blackwood wasnt in all of the episodes ..he was only in one according to imdb...mind u it was a long time ago....maybe the phrase "one step beyond" was just the intro ....f*** it ! wrong again ..nothing new..i must be getting old.....
regards

[Mayerling]

Hi Doug,

Is the "Algernon Blackwood" you are talking about the horror story writer?
I though he died in the 1950s.

Jeff

[dougie]

mayerling,
If ive got the right name he was around in 70s at least,maybe im confused......im pretty sure its the right name.
regards

[dougie]

mayerling,
Im not so confused now, after much research ive discovered that it wasnt algernon blackwood at all (not sure where i got that idea from) it was the scottish actor john laurie (i believe) and it wasnt one step beyond..it was "mystery and imagination"..but im sure he used the phrase one step beyond..or maybe thats but another figment of my imagination
regards

[Celesta]

Hi all,

I am quite lazy these days, as our weather has just gone into the high 90s in New York and Metropolitan area. Have to go to work, but it is hard to get into the swing of things.

I have only one iterm of interest to mention (since Mike and Celeste are talking about houses - albeit ghostly visitations). Alexander Hamilton's home up in City College's campus in upper Manhattan was moved to a nearby park. Finally they are going to treat it properly and make it a museum in honor of our first Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton lived in the "Grange" for only two years (1802 - 1804, when he was killed in the duel with Burr). It's a two story buttermilk yellow mansion. It should turn out to be a nice historical house museum.

There are other historical houses in upper Manhattan: The Dyckman house at 192nd Street (I believe) is an old farmhouse from the American Revolution, which includes a cabin used as a barracks. It's not that many blocks away from one of my favorite museums - the Cloisters, which specializes in medieval art and history. Then there is the Jumel Mansion -which is supposed to be haunted!

Madame Jumel was a woman (supposedly an ex - prostitute) who captivated and married Mr. Stephen Jumel, a wealthy farmer, in the early 1810s. Shortly afterwards Jumel died under odd circumstances, and his money and farm went to Madame Jumel. One of the richest women in New York City in the Era of Good Feelings and the Jacksonian period, in 1835 she married former Vice President Aaron Burr. It didn't last - she divorced him when it was shown he was guilty of adultery. Supposedly the ghost of Mrs Jumel and possibly her husband (but not Burr) has been seen in the house in Morningside Heights. By the way, the house was the headquarters (briefly) of George Washington during the battles around New York in 1776 (or at least so I heard).

Best wishes,

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

Yes, I saw where you guys were getting some pretty hot weather for so early in the season. If I recall correctly, we were having some really nice temps down here, in the 70's and low 80's, so I was surprised when I saw the weather for your part of the turf.

I'm glad the Grange will be in a place where it will get the care it deserves. I saw some hysterical markers down in St Croix about Hamilton, but they were in Christiansted, and I couldn't make out what they were referring to, and there was no one to ask, really. I know that the name the Grange goes all the way back to his father's estate in ? Scotland? and that the name was used again in St Croix and then again in the US.

You mentioned a cabin that was used as a barracks. I have seen some historic cabins, at least two stories tall, square in shape, that were used as a sort of stockade during pioneer days, as a defensive location from "Indians." I wonder if this is the same sort of building. It seems that this may have been a standard design in that era. A local sheriff restored one of those and had it on his property. I saw another of these somewhere, set aside as an historic building. Does this sound at all familiar?

It would be a big surprise if much of New York was not haunted! So much history, so much passion...


Best...

[Mike Covell]

Got 4 new locations today for future investigations!!

Also made an interesting find, but you will all have to wait!! It is Ripper related, but I have to wait for someone to get back to me!!

And No Plang, it's not a signed DoorNob!!

[Mayerling]

Hi Celeste, Doug, Mike, and Stan,

The Dykeman House has two log cabins in the back which were the "barracks" for our boys in the Revolution (I suspect the British had similar log cabin barracks - officers on both sides commendeered people's posh homes (like Washington used what became Madame Jumel's)).

The story of Hamilton's life in the West Indies is still full of holes we don't totally understand. His mother and father never married (leading John Adams' to one day make a famous slur about Hamilton being the bastard brat of a Scottish pedlar). His father appears to be a member of the Scottish Hamilton family (which if true may link our most famous duelling victim with Britain's 4th Duke of Hamilton (actually Douglas-Hamilton) who killed and was killed by the 4th Baron Mohun in Hyde Park in November 1712).* Hamilton's father came to the Indies to make his fortune, but failed to do so. He left his wife with Alec, and she eventually married a man named Levien who was a well to do merchant. It also (ironically) appears that Mr. Levien was Jewish. One historian pointed out that if Levien had been Alec's father his rise in American society in that period would have been severely curtailed.
Levien and Alec's mother had a second child, whom Alec remained fairly close to as he grew older (a half-brother who frequently was in touch with him).
Levien was not the nicest person with his stepson, but apparently helped train his economic brains.

*There was a later rumor that young Hamilton was not the real father of Hamilton (who was born on Barbados). The official year of Hamilton's birth (the exact year is debatable) was 1757. It may be 1751 or 1755. But somebody noticed that in 1751 George Washington had been on his one trip off the North American continent to Barbados. It was suggested (as Hamilton was treated by Washington as a son for most of their lives) that Alex was actually the illegitimate son of George. By the way, if you read the section of the Constitution that limits the election of only native born Americans to the Presidency, an exception was made that enabled Hamilton (one of the architects of the Constitution) to run for President if he wanted to. He never got the chance to do that.

Hamilton came to the colony of New York only in the 1770s. He was quite bright, and was able to get through the curriculum of King's College (later Columbia University) within two years. In later years, of all people, Talleyrand (who spent two years in America in the 1790s) said that Alexander Hamilton was the ablest and most intelligent man he ever met.
Keep in mind Talleyrand also knew Napoleon, Robespierre, Delacroix the artist (possibly Talleyrand's illegitimate son), Castlereigh and Canning, Metternich, Goethe, and many others - and thought that Hamilton was the most brilliant.

I don't know much about the ghosts of my fair city but I'm sure there must be some books about haunted "Gotham".

I remember John Laurie. He was in many old movies (like Hitchcock's THE THIRTY NINE STEPS) and was also a regular in the comedy DAD'S ARMY about England's homeland defense in the early 1940s.

Best wishes,

Jeff

[plang]

Good one Mike...doorknob...