Artifacts and Objects

The Kaleidoscope

While honeymooning in Maine, my wife and I stopped in the picturesque town of Boothbay on a particularly dreary and rainy day. Since our planned picnic was out of the question, we sought shelter in a dilapidated little antique store near the harbour. While my wife inspected the large chests

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The X-Ray Glasses

For a brief period in 1971, a New Jersey based company sold novelty “X-ray” glasses through the mail via advertisements in the Marvel line of comic books. People who viewed their televisions while wearing these glasses reported seeing images that were “hellish” or “like hell”. It should be noted that

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The Statue

You some how wake up surrounded by very tall hedges. You are very disoriented and groggy. As you observe your surroundings, you realize that you are in a very complex hedge maze. The hedges are 10 feet high and impossible to see over. There is a light fog dispersed throughout

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The Notebook

Somewhere in the world, there is a collection of books. Perhaps it’s in a dusty, unpainted shelf in the back corner of someone’s attic; perhaps it’s in a set of musty boxes in the basement of some tiny, obscure library. It contains a few hundred volumes, all handwritten, ranging from

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The Baby Doll

In rural southern Illinois a toy company began selling “realistic” baby dolls to expectant mothers. But apparently after the mother had her child the toy baby would start crying. Eventually the “rocking motion” advertised to calm it down wouldn’t work, and you couldn’t get it to stop without shaking it.

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A Recipe For Success

Prominently displayed in the children’s section of the Houston Downtown Public Library, among several others of the same title, My First Cookbook appears as a run-of-the-mill children’s cookbook, complete with large print, simple instructions, colorful, friendly illustrations, and a somewhat disproportionate desert section. In fact, the only major deviation from

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The Tattoo

You wake after a wild night of partying to find that while you were wasted, for some reason you had a crude smiley face tattooed on your foot. You write it off as a lesson to never drink that much again. The next time you wake, however, you discover the

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The Angel

A few years ago, a mother and father decided they needed a break, so they wanted to head out for a night on the town. They called their most trusted babysitter. When the babysitter arrived, the two children were already fast asleep in bed. So the babysitter just got to

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The Empty Vial

You come into possession of an old box. Inside are several glass vials filled with dirt, dust and tiny bits of gravel or cement. The vials are labeled with places and dates such as “Port Chicago 7/17/44”, “Halifax 7/6/17” and “Guernica 7/17/36”. A trip to the library confirms that all

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