Tombstone Tuesday!

A word of advice for the groundskeeper of St. Catharines' Victoria Lawn Cemetery: If you trim some of that shrubbery back, your Johnson will look much bigger.


Stay Tombed!

-DE

"Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold."

- William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

One of the great things about Niagara-On-The-Lake is that nearly every building has a story and nearly every story inevitably leads to a ghost story. 240 Centre St. is no exception, but while most haunted sites in N-O-T-L are simply a venue for ghostly apparitions, this place is a ghostly apparition. I don't know if this house actually is haunted, but it sure looks and feels like it.

Located at the southeast corner of Centre and Mississagua [sic] Streets in Niagara-On-The-Lake's historic Old Town and facing the Presbyterian Church cemetery across the street, 240 Centre St. stands out amongst the other houses around it by not standing out at all.

Whereas most other buildings in N-O-T-L have been maintained or restored to a pristine appearance, the house at 240 Centre St. is conspicuously run-down, while surrounding trees and underbrush cloak it's street-front sides, making the building almost invisible to passing motorists and pedestrians.

Much like the house itself, information on its history is very hard to find. According to page 35 of the 2004 Niagara-On-The-Lake Visitor's Guide, the building, known as the Breakenridge-Ure House, was built circa 1823 and was the third brick house built by John Breakenridge, a well-known Niagara lawyer. When Breakenridge died in 1828, the house was used as a school by his widow through the 1830s.

Even while standing directly in front of the building's corner, it manages to completely hide from view.

The way the tree's branches all seem to bend to create a screen of foliage around the building is really eerie.

Even where it is possible to see through the brush to the walls behind, not much is revealed besides brick and boards.

This was an interesting find. The entire house is securely boarded to prevent trespassers from entering. Every door and window was sealed up tight except the one second story rear window with a small open slot at the top. The tree's branch seems to reach right up and touch that very spot. Which begs the question, what's coming and going through that hole and how on earth did the tree manage to grow directly towards it? Probably better not to ask . . .

Around back is the barn and a covered well and further along behind that is a tiny (yet thickly overgrown) forest.

Coming back around to the front of the house, I noticed a peephole had been punched through the boards covering the door . . .

Niki dared me to peek in, but there was no way I was putting my eye up against that hole, so I did one better by simply placing the camera over it. Once the camera lens covered the hole entirely, the viewfinder focused to reveal this creepy staircase lit from above (I'm guessing from that one rear window that was slightly open).

Looking at the viewfinder, I felt a chill run down my spine as I was reminded of a line from Stephen King's third Dark Tower novel, The Waste Lands:

"All is silent in the halls of the dead . . . All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. Behold the stairways which stand in darkness; behold the rooms of ruin. These are the halls of the dead where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one."

After that, we decided we'd had enough of these rooms of ruin and quickly headed back to the car and went straight home before it got dark!

Online information about the Breakenridge-Ure House is scarce, but if you'd like to see more, there are a few pictures to be found at the Right In Niagara blog and Flickr.

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

Here it is, our second Tombstone Tuesday and how UNearth can I follow up last week? After seeing a rock 'n roll guitar-god's memorial in the fabulous, far-off land of Hollywood, California what comes next? Well, once you've broached the subject of The Ramones and cemeteries, there's really only one answer, isn't there?

Here's a photo Niki took of a local "Pet Sematary" across the street from St. Joseph's Cemetery in Port Colborne, along the north coast of Lake Erie.


Stay Tombed! And remember "Sometimes dead is better . . ."

-DE

Fully Metal Jackets

Happy Thanksgiving to all you Canadian DE/VL lovers out there!

While I try to complete my latest creepy creation by Halloween - an anniversary gift for my darling demoness Niki - here's some pics of a couple of metal/punk jackets that I recently completed.

The first is a full-sized jacket for a friend who had been asking me for years to make one for him. I'd put it off and put it off and then, once I finally broke down and got to work cutting fabric, sewing patches, painting panels and punching metal studs, what resulted was a finished jacket that looked so amazing that it broke my heart to let it go.

When it came time to re-outfit our good friends' two-year-old son with a new toddler-sized jacket (just after he was born, I'd made an infant-sized one that he'd long since grown out of), I borrowed some of the elements from the full-sized jacket, making it spooky looking, but still managing to keep it kid friendly. Here's what the final product ended up looking like:


I'm always working on one or two jackets, so there'll be more posted in the future and you can find more examples in the Apparel section of the DE/VL Design website.

-DE

RIP Steve Jobs

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” - Steve Jobs

DE/VL Design's first Tombstone Tuesday!

In the spirit of the season, every Tuesday I'll be posting one or more pictures featuring a gravestone that Niki or I have photographed during our (many) crypt crawls. It could be a relative, celebrity, historical figure, or just an eye-catching marker worthy of note, who knows?
For our very first Tuesday Tombstone, I think we should go BIG, so here's one of our favourite finds: Johnny Ramone's marker at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.


Paying our respects to the legend . . .


Stay "Tombed" for more every Tuesday!

-DE

Where Does The Devil Go When He’s Thirsty?

What’s life in the Niagara Region without mention of a waterfall, right? Right. So without further ado, let’s head west out of the Niagara Region and visit Hamilton! Huh?! Yeah, that’s right, Niagara isn’t the only place to dig on a waterfall. In fact, the City of Hamilton has over 120 known waterfalls; giving it the distinction of being the Waterfall Capitol of the World. One hundred-plus waterfalls sounds impressive, but there was only one that grabbed our attention and wouldn’t let go, and with a name like "The Devil’s Punchbowl" how could we not check it out?

Driving there was pretty easy, really. From the QEW, we took the Centennial Parkway exit in Stoney Creek and headed south. Staying on Centennial as we made our way up the Escarpment, we took the first left after cresting the ridge onto (what else?) Ridge Road.


After a few twists and turns, we knew we were on the right track when we spotted the Punchbowl Market. I thought it was interesting that there was no mention of said Punchbowl belonging to the Devil, but then not everyone is so quick align themselves with the Great Adversary.


We parked across the street from the market at the lot provided (bring a few dollars, the Hamilton Conservation Authority's posted daily rate at the self serve parking fee station is $2.00 per person to a maximum of $5.00 per car), and from there a short path leads to a concrete platform offering a spectacular panoramic view of Hamilton, the Skyway bridge and both the southern and northern shores of Lake Ontario, as well as a dizzying view of the drop to the rushing river below.


Curiously, the platform is also home to a giant light-bulb studded metal cross soaring at least 50 feet high and overlooking Stoney Creek. There is a commemorative plaque honoring the cross’ construction, but besides that, there’s no explanation as to why a giant Lite-Brite crucifix beams out from the Escarpment.


Following the trail along the top of the ravine we got closer to the sound of crashing water and there it was, a slim ribbon of “devil’s punch” jetting out and down into a deep concavity in the earth, looking exactly like the name suggests: a bowl made out of layers and layers of rock.


Anyone familiar with Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, I think, would immediately understand how this waterfall came to be named. It’s impossible to look at the formation of stone and not be reminded of the concentric circles of each level of Hell leading down to the bottom of the pit.


Looking over the edge, I recalled one scene where Dante and Virgil encounter - and eventually take a descending ride from - Geryon, the demonic personification of fraud, at the top of a cliff, next to a waterfall cascading down from the seventh circle to the eighth:


‘Our beast goes swimming slowly, and describing
Wide circles in descent: I’m only conscious
Of wind brushing my face and wind arising.

Already I could hear upon our right
The torrent roaring horribly below,
And craned my neck as I looked out for it.

Then, being terrified that I might drop,
Seeing such fires and hearing such laments,
I shuddered, and held on, and huddled up.’

- Inferno, Canto XVII, lines 115-123

Of course, once the connection to Dante was made, that old rugged cross covered in light-bulbs brought to mind another scene from The Divine Comedy, one that almost seemed to explain it’s presence there:

‘From horn to horn, from top to base their station
Changing, went moving light, which as they met
And passed threw out a dazzling coruscation;

Thus we on earth, swift, slow, zig-zag or straight,
Little or large, in this or that direction,
See particles of bodies disparate

Dance in the shaft of light that carves a section
Sheer sometimes through the shuttered darkness which
By art and skill men make for their protection.’

- Paradiso, Canto XIV, lines 109-117


For more information on The Devil’s Punchbowl and all of Hamilton’s waterfalls, be sure to visit Hamilton: The City of Waterfalls.

For more information on the Devil’s Punchbowl Cross, you can check out Historical Hamilton.

-DE