Tonight, Saturday, Nov. 1, I’ll be on Coast to Coast again to talk about BUMP IN THE NIGHT. Actually, it will be early Nov. 2 for me – 1-3 a.m., since Florida is three hours later than Oregon, the site of the broadcast. Coast to Coast is the largest late night paranormal talk show. It’s also available on the Internet at the Coast to Coast site.
This will be the third time in less than two years that I’ve been interviewed for C2C, once with Trish for Aliens in the Backyard, once with Bruce Gernon, my co-author of The Fog. We talked about the lost Malaysian Airline Flight 370. Oddly enough, I had written Dave Schrader, host of Darkness Radio in Minneapolis, about BUMP, not the producer at C2C. It turns out Dave was scheduled to sub as host there Saturday and invited me to join him.
Here’s the kind of story I’ll be talking about on the air, and the kind you can read about in the book.
During the making of “Ghost Rider: The Spirit of Vengeance,” Nicholas Cage supposedly got so into character that he decided to spend a night in Transylvania’s infamous Bran Castle, aka, Dracula’s Castle. In the movie, stunt motorcyclist Johnny Blaze (Cage) hides out in Eastern Europe where he is called upon to stop the devil, who is attempted to take human form.
“We were shooting in Romania, Transylvania, and he just went up there to spend the night,” recalls costar Idris Elba. “True story.”
When Elba asked Cage about it the following morning, he told her he’d stayed in the castle to ‘channel the energy’ in preparation for filming the movie.
It’s not the first time Cage has been associated with the paranormal. In 2011, a photograph of a man from the American Civil War era went viral on the internet because the man looked nearly identical to Cage. Bloggers speculated that Cage was a time traveler or even possibly a vampire. Supposedly, the original of the photo was offered for sale on eBay for $1 million.
Between 2007 and 2009, Cage lived in a haunted house that he had bought, hoping the ghosts would inspire his efforts to write a horror novel. The house had once belonged to Madame Lalaurie, an infamous 19th century socialite, who was notorious for murdering her slaves.
Apparently, there wasn’t much ghostly encouragement for his creative endeavor. In spite of the estate’s eerie past, Cage admitted that he didn’t get very far with the book. Hm, possibly he needs a ghost writer!
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BUMP has a surprise at the end, a lengthy chapter of a future book called Alien Light: The Better Side of Contact. The chapter describes in depth the story of ‘Sandy,’ a retired vet who has experienced alien and spirit contact much of her life.
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From Trish: I’ll be serving coffee and Cuban pastries. Do stop by!
I wonder if it is being broadcast from Portland?
I will definitely listen tomorrow as I’m a Coast Insider. Can’t stay up that late – still confused with the three hour time difference between Maui and Portland. Now we have an end to daylight savings time. Anyway, can’t wait to catch up on this program tomorrow. Good luck!
It went wel!
The last half hour was callers with questions, and someone asked me about the origin of my title BUMP in the NIGHT. Where did that phrase come from? I confessed I didn’t know, but thought it was probably a literary reference. He said I was right and told me the answer. It came from a short story by James Thurber called, ‘The Night the Ghost Got In.’
So I learned something new. What I already knew, and what we reinforced, was that answering questions on the radio between 1-3 a.m. is not my favorite thing to do.
Things that go bump in the night:
The earliest known example of the phrase in print is in the 1918 book Bulletin of the School Oriental and African Studies:
“To a people … who … believe in genii, ghosts, goblins, and those terrific things that ‘go bump in the night’, protective charms are eagerly sought for.”
That usage suggests that the author expected his readers to be familiar with the phrase. Around the same time the phrase was incorporated into a prayer:
From goulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night
Good Lord, deliver us!
This was recorded in The Cornish and West Country Litany, 1926, but was quite likely to be much earlier.
Great info, even the goulies! Thanks, Mike!