Since I was already in the area cooing at my submersible friends at AquaCorals, I decided I would stop at an antique mall just down the street. I was told by locals it was huge and would take me at least two hours to rummage through. They were not kidding! This was an enormous building, several old industrial barns I think, with five winding labyrinthine floors. It just kept going and going and going… They had something for everyone here. If you’re familiar with my blog you probably already know what I was looking for – anything really bizarre and a light smattering of soul sucking dolls. I was not disappointed! And since there’s not really much more I can say on the topic I decided this entry will be a little… different. So I am taking my favorite photos of the hundreds I took and am just going to add a little…. commentary. If you’re easily offended this is probably the point you should leave this page, otherwise continue on!
Literally the first thing I saw was a giant cock… no really, isn’t he handsome? If I still ran a poultry farm he would have so come home with me.
After entering the store I stumbled onto this HUGE moose head with the most amusing sign behind him… It reads, “Hunting $50.00 per day, by written permission only.” I’m not a hunter but I sort of think this one’s already spent.
Then I found an album of what is most likely some of my distant relatives…. though this woman has a striking resemblance to Lizzie Borden and I wonder….
Followed by a set of terrifying patriotic mugs…
By this time my mother, who was tagging along in today’s adventures, was rifling through the old photos when she came across this one and finally admitted they might actually be relatives of ours…
I may have replied if I weren’t distracted by a series of pots who appeared to be blooming? Seriously though, what is up with the one on the far left?? It’s going to burst!
Two seconds later I got the sensation someone was watching me and when I turned around I found out it was Amelia Earhart. Huh.
Then I started running into the…. randomly probably quite racist items. I don’t even know which minority this is supposed to be offending. It looks like an old Asian dude wearing an Indian feather…?!
Then I found the saddest lion glued to a hot air balloon! I think he was sad because the hunter on the left shot his family…
“Pediophobia is the unwarranted, irrational and persistent fear or worry of dolls.” Why do I mention this? Oh no reason….
There is no word for the rational fear of dolls but I believe there should be. Just look at this doll and tell me there isn’t something a wee bit off there.
Of course dolls don’t always kill people. Sometimes they take out their murderous rage on other dolls. Evidence of this can be seen here. Witness the empty pram, the demonically smiling blonde looking up at the light like she just sacrificed a baby to the gods – OH LOOK! To the lefthand corner we can see the crumpled corpse of an infant! SHE DID. SHE TOTALLY SACRIFICED THAT BABY!
This doll knows something we don’t, maybe he’s next…
A common trick for serial killer dolls is to leave something shiny out for potential victims to be distracted by…Â Oooooo!Â
AHHHH! Those soulless eyes!
No worries, this next one’s asleep – and I am terribly confused by it. Just… why??
Hey look! It’s a me! I’m not for sale though. Sorta like Alice from Alice’s Restaurant. You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant, excepting Alice…
“Coulrophobia is the persistent and irrational fear of clowns.”
Coulropediophobia is the persistent and irrational fear of clown dolls. (Also I may have just made that up but it seems like it should be a thing…)
Here’s a cow who has apparently been eating cow flops…. Maybe the doll behind him was bullying him?
The eighties were a weird time when little girls across the country all bounded for joy to have their very own Little Miss Prosti-Tot. Her first name is Trix.
This baby knows something, something big, something dark. Hey where’d Trix go?
“Look! I found a re-borne! Its heavy! And cute! IT HAS DROOL!” — “Mom, put that down. It looks like it came from the morgue.”
I know this post is getting a little doll heavy but look at these giggling ankle biters…. tell me they won’t haunt your dreams tonight…
I have no idea what’s going on here…. and something tells me I don’t want to… look at that shocked expression in the back corner!
This one just ate someone’s heart, I swear, ripped it right out of their chest. That’s why she’s so gleeful.
OK OK, time to stop staring at the dolls and hope they aren’t like Weeping Angels, you know coming to kill you as soon as you blink. Look! A weird ENORMOUS painting of a moth! And a lock! How manly! It’s art for menly men!
And of course it’s not a real antique store if there isn’t any froofy furniture… I have for you, a chair, the first of many, but don’t worry, I won’t linger like I did with the dolls.
I was actually kind of impressed with this next one. It’s a bird made entirely of seeds. I call it a seedling.
I rubbed it and made three wishes. All that happened is I got thrown out for molesting the lamps.
Never trust a nun. Never trust a nurse. And never trust a cat. (Also never trust someone with too many Doctor Who jokes.)
That last rhyme said nothing of hares…. but this one doesn’t look trustworthy either.
“OK, I need you to make me a butter dish in the shape of a terrified cat…. make sure to add googly eyes.”
I’m at a lack of words for this next one. Well sort of. I mean I have words…. I just don’t think I should use them. A picture is worth a thousand after all…
Shout out to all the Mass girls…
I’m going to kill you thiiiiiiis much!
Here are some Humbolt figurines telling each other stories of lurid debauchery.
“Can’t sleep, clown’s going to eat me. Can’t sleep, clowns going to eat me.”
For a second I forgot this place actually had legitimately not-scary things for sale…
I actually sort of like this lamp…. which makes no sense since dolls and Cherubs freak me out so much…
Bet you didn’t know UnDead dolls were a thing…
PUPPY!!
Yes, if you want your crank phone to work… add wires. Always add wires.
“All the better to strangle you with!”
I found Liberace’s dinnerware…
I am as surprised as you are – granted I don’t have a bottle shoved up my backside… so maybe not.
Two old tribesmen…. fighting over CDs…. (Seriously the label said this was a CD rack…)
My eye was caught by some really sweet purple bottles…. and then I started reading them. This one literally says “2oz Sperm” which had me concerned for a moment before I continued to read “sewing machine oil.”
Unless you collect buttons you have no idea how impressive this is…
HOLY CRAP. WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CHUNK OF ORANGE… I must be delirious from the heat! (It is actually 94 degrees and muuuuuuuugggggy, so this may be a hallucination. Either way I don’t have $45 or a place to put such a wonder…)
OK, now I am positive I am hallucinating because that wall hanging looks like Wilfred, that crude smack-talking Australian dude in a dog outfit…
PLEASE NOÂ homoerotic displays “DANCING” Coincidentally this sign also reminded me of this scene:
The Doctor: We were talking about dancing.
Captain Jack: It didn’t look like talking.
Rose Tyler: It didn’t feel like dancing.
I’m not going to ask what he’s spitting out.
OH HELL NO. FETCH ME THE FLY SWATTER!! QUICK!!
I found a soulless cocker spaniel. Who knew!
Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? No one, because no one dared…. holy crap is this thing scary!
A tiny doll mink trap!
This doll is not amused by that last joke. She knew another doll whose porcelain ankle was shattered by a doll mink trap once…
My mother, “I had a doll exactly like this once!” Damned if I didn’t know that – her brother bought it for her when they were children and her other brother ripped off its fingers. She kept the fingers in a tiny drawer hoping someday to glue them back on but then the doll got ruined or thrown out or something and all that was left were tiny tiny disembodied fingers…. which I found later. You know what? This could begin to explain my ill ease with dolls…
WHY?!
LOVE the sign behind these two soulless dears. “Visitors of hotel guests MUST LEAVE.” Must be the hotel California.
“Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
‘Relax’ said the night man,
‘We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!'”
There’s too many things in this next work of art that rattle me to the core for me to even begin explaining…
He’s just pissed he’s been stored in a box surrounded on all sides by honky music.
I legitimately thought these were artful renditions of the TARDIS at first…
Another small dead child.
I’m being alerted I haven’t offended enough Asian people in this post soooo…
Look! A jaundiced pig! Who’s up to something.
Anyone remember being read Babushka’s Doll as a child? Also, you know what, my fears of dolls is starting to really make sense now.
Butt nuggets Cookies!!
He’s seen too much.
Uhmmm…. that’s not where salt comes from….
This bitch is too classy for this joint.
What’s that? I also haven’t offended enough black people? OK, we’ll just see what this doll has to say about that!
The only two realistic looking black dolls ARE NOT AMUSED by that last joke. In fact they’re not amused by anything. Whose idea was it to make a series of depressed children’s dolls anyway?
Paradise Lost? “WAKE UP EVE! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WAKE UP!”
Did you know Native Americans are devils? Me either.
OK the Viking ship is kind of impressive… though I don’t think wooden sails sounds like such a great idea.
These two little gents got their portrait painted after they murdered the rest of their family and took a break to smoke a pipe. Seriously though, why is the little one smoking a pipe?! And are those really cemetery crosses?!
Ah, that’s better, a pony.
I found this cabinet, which I really liked, buuut I think it’s haunted. No reason, just a swirling feeling in my gut…
Just to be sure I opened it to let the ghosts out.
Remember when I said the first thing I saw was a giant cock? Well, the last thing I saw leaving was two giant cocks. Hope you enjoyed my little jaunt, until next time!
I don’t think there’s anyone reading this blog that has done so since the very beginning, back when it was called Chasing Marbles, not Catching Marbles, but if you have you’d know that one of the very first stops I took before going cross country was a little salt water shop in Fairfield Maine called AquaCorals. I was so new to blogging I didn’t even have a camera! So I decided to go back and see what my macro lens could do and see how it was going.
Also I brought some friends, who wanted to come along and see what the hell I was talking about…. trained fish…. We were warmly welcomed and my crew got quite an education! From filtration, to healthy bacteria, to end of life fish care, the shop owner was happy to share. She also let us see her trained fish do a couple tricks, swooshing from side of the tank to the other and twirling on command. I smiled. One of the trained fish was a Yellow Tang, much like the one who died on me a few years ago and took piece of my heart with him. RIP Mr. Yellow. It was a very lovely trip down memory lane, back to when I was into all this stuff. Now I came only with a camera and a smile but you know what? It was super relaxing and a wonderful way to spend an otherwise unbearably hot afternoon. I even made peace with an old enemy – the starfish. Starfish really freak me out but the feather star I found there was actually pretty charming!
I went through the whole shop, which for Maine is quite extensive. She had some very beautiful corals, all super healthy, and the fish were bright and rambunctious as well. Sadly the fish didn’t like my camera much and hid and the corals were lit with a lighting my camera wasn’t used to so most of the photos came out crazy blurry. Moral of the story? I’m a shitty photographer. Just kidding, the moral of the story is I should really go back and try again with a regular lens… or read the manual and figure out what I am doing wrong…. but who does that?
After taking as many photos as my heart desired I returned to gaze upon some very vibrant zooanthids and talked for a while longer. I asked if she had any mantis shrimp knocking about which is a bit like going to a sheep farm and asking where the wolves are at but I can’t help what my heart desires! And I do love mantis shrimp! Despite the fact they are 
Well! As it turns out there’s a bunch of things going on in Maine I should really be up here for so last Thursday I packed up my car and braved five hours of dragon’s breathe (fog) to get to central Maine. I’ll be up here for a couple weeks…. getting into trouble and whatnot. So far it’s been wonderful. I took a photo of the dragon’s breathe and a new friend I found in the yard this morning. I’m calling him Tom.
Today’s little adventure was to a Steampunk Craft Fair and Festival in Dexter. For those of you not in the know Dexter is a tiny town smack dab in the middle of nowhere and a damn strange place to have such a thing…. which is obviously what made me want to go. It’d either be amazing, or amazingly bad, either way I’m happy! So off I went! (I was however not ballsy enough to attend the costume party at the adjoining bar the night before… Not that I had anything to wear on such short notice.)
I must say it is HOT and MUGGY today… and the little festival in the middle of the parking lot around the old factory building. TO my surprise there were a lot of people dressed up! Most were vendors, and the live music, but I think a few were just nutballs like me. I wasn’t totally dressed down – I did wear my octopus shirt which looks very Jules Verne-esque. And someone did compliment it… I think he was trying to say it looked like Cthulhu.
Anyway, I was happily surprised with the diversity here. There were a lot of crafters, a lot of gears, a lot of keys, all glued on masks, tiles, earrings, you name it. Even talked to one young woman making her own chainmail. Seriously. Hand-made chain mail. I asked where the hell she picked up that skill…. she said her school taught it. Wow. Maybe if my school were that interesting growing up I wouldn’t have prayed so hard for the building to “blow down in one good gust,” as one of the teachers lamented, “That’s all it’d take! One good gust!”
Of course I also went in the hopes of seeing local authors. I wasn’t disappointed. I ended up buying three books, all signed, for $35. One was a collection of short stories, another was some sort of whimsical fiction, and the third was a graphic novel which I am not known for buying but it looked so damn detailed… the woman who inked and wrote that one said she was used to doing comic con type circuits, indoors. I could see that. Everyone was super friendly and very passionate, what I would hoped to find in such a gathering. For the dead center of Nowheresville Maine I think this was pulled off pretty well! Especially for the first year in doing this. Maybe next year I’ll return as a vendor!
Acadia is one of my favorite places to go. The park is enormous and has something to offer everyone. It has hiking trails of all levels and capabilities for the athletic among us but it also has a variety of stunning views you can either see directly out your car window or very easily access. If that’s not enough to tempt you there’s also a number of beaches both rocky and sandy and a few other attractions that lure the curious.
I have been to Acadia two or three times already, always off season, and I didn’t pay anything to get in because of this, but I guess I was either too early this year or they changed their policy. Some of the park remained free – like the drive up Cadillac Mountain, but by the time I got close to Thunderhole I approached a toll gate and had to fork over $25 for a week’s pass. That’s OK though, it was worth it.
This visit was a short one as I was busy socializing for most fo the day and only arrived at 2PM but I still packed a lot into a few hours! I especially wanted to drive to the summit of Cadillac Mountain to get a few nice foliage photos and enjoy the fresh mountain air. I was shocked how many people were here! But I guess when the weather is a freakish 70-some-odd degrees people are more likely to come out and enjoy nature at its finest. I stopped at several points to take a few snaps and enjoyed the summit as well as the Overlook at Blue Hill the most as far as the mountain went. I ended up shuffling out onto the bare rocks at the summit and enjoyed a bit of time just soaking in the view – which included all the colorful trees I could wish for, a delightful pond, a few islands off the coast, and unseasonably blue skies. It was hard not to stay here forever. Unlike many parks Acadia is open 24/7 all year long…. Obviously this means I must return once more… at night. The view must be amazing then! I wonder if you can hear loons or if wolves exist in the park…
Anyway, that flight of fancy erased from my mind I continued onwards, driving back down the mountain. On my way I had to stop the car to let a deer pass and took a shot out my car window of a second that was staring at me from a few feet away. I got one good snap before another car barreled by in the travel lane scaring them both off.
 I wanted to see Thunderhole – which is this rock formation at the coast that makes a thunderous noise when the waves from the ocean rush through it. I have been told about it for years from all sorts of relatives ad friends and had yet to check it out… but first I passed Sand Beach, the main sandy beach in the park, and had to get out to amble for a bit. It was low tide. I had never been here during low tide. I must say all the exposed rocks gave it extra character! There wasn’t too many people there at this time of day, or year, certainly no polar bear swimming club to be seen, but there were a few families playing with nerf balls and kites. I’m surprised there weren’t any dogs – as they are allowed in the park.
Truth be told these people were probably all here to take advantage of the sunset which was closing in soon. It was a good vantage point for that – though not the best conditions today. It was a bit gray out.
It all starts with Colonel Buck, one of the town’s founding leaders. I was told the story went something like this: A long time ago there was a mayor named Colonel Buck who had an illicit affair with a woman about the town and when she threatened to spill the beans about it he had her burned as a witch. As she was engulfed in flames her foot fell out of the fire, flopped onto the grave stone of her accuser, and made a permanent mark after she cried out some curse involving said foot. It’s a marvelous story. Gruesome, morbid, full of intrigue… and a complete lie. This had to have been made up by some bored parent one day teasing their children walking by the cemetery. Still, it attracts visitors from all over who come to gaze at Colonel Buck’s Tomb, which isn’t a tomb so much as a pillar shaped gravestone that was erected six decades after he died. He also wasn’t the mayor, he was a justice of the peace, and if he had any illicit love affairs they’re not on record and neither is there any record of any executions of witches in Maine. In fact the only witches put to death in all of New England were hung or pressed to death with stones, not burned alive. There’s a sign saying all this, basically a big ol’ bulletin that might as well read, “Y’all full of shit.” but hey if it’s real blood guts and gore you’re after there’s a much lesser known stone with a much truer story a few streets away.
This is the stone of Sarah Ware. Her story is as weird as it gets up here in Maine. She was unusual in life because she was a divorced woman in the 1800’s, something pretty much unheard of. This had to have given her one hell of a stigma and maybe it was exactly that that got her killed. Life as a divorcee was not easy then and at fifty two years of age she was supporting herself by being a Jill of all trades babysitting, cleaning, and doing the odd job here and there. She was on her way home one evening when she disappeared. She was found two weeks later in a field viciously bludgeoned to death. She had been beaten so badly that when the body was removed her head fell clean off and her jaw was nowhere to be found. It was then kept as evidence as the rest of her was buried somewhere. Her head was kept in criminal storage as evidence for nearly a century before clerks discovered this gruesome artifact in 1983. The head was given a stone and laid to rest in the Oak Hill Cemetery, sans body.
There is an observatory at the top of the bridge overlooking 
Everyone exchanged pleasantries and talked about vertigo and trees. Then they turned to me and addressed the elephant in the room – my flaming orange hair. I was suddenly flooded with compliments and told I was “brave.” I laughed and smiled. I think I will keep my hair this color. I got probably ten comments on it from strangers that day. I think it’s a delightful ice breaker. Finally the elevator dinged and we all got out, climbed a few stairs, and voila! We’re in a fish tank at the top of the world! Or so it felt.
Since I have been up in Maine I have noticed the fall foliage I am hunting seems to be showing up in random patches, usually the most gorgeous of which are alongside the road where there’s no turn off and everyone is going seventy miles an hour… so frustrating. So today I thought the mountains might have both a gorgeous view and those drop dead gorgeous trees I have been aching to find. I heard rumors there was a castle atop Mount Battie, all the better for this month’s celebrations – maybe it’s not haunted but a castle is still cool and one atop Mount Battie seemed all the more appropriate.
There were hiking trails for those of us who wanted to hike their way to the top. I would have loved that had it been a different day but my body was already wearing under the strain of yesterday’s overly ambitious travels. Plus I had a bunch of other places I wanted to go today so I did the chicken shit thing – I took the auto road. It was surprisingly short! It took of all of a minute or two to get to the summit. There were school buses and children everywhere. This was apparently the place to take your kid on a field trip. There were just throngs of them scrabbling around like ship rats, most eating their lunches on the rocks at the summit. There was a “castle” here… a sweet little castle-like tower standing alone with a plaque reading, “To all those brave men and women who fought in the world war.” How sweet whoever built it thought there’d only be one! You could climb to the top and get a pretty spectacular view, though still very very green. SIGH. It was really bright today though and my camera wasn’t keen on that. I wasn’t the only one having difficulty. I snapped a photo for a sweet older couple at the top. Not sure if they were a couple or friends or just met… was having a hard time figuring that out… but if they were a couple they were older, in Maine, and interracial. That could explain the hesitance. Perhaps even in these seemingly more liberal coastal towns such things are highly looked down upon. Shame. We should all embrace happiness whenever we can achieve it and be happy for others when they have found theirs.
Fort Popham is just a half a mile up the road from 
My Haunted New England Tour this month could do with a few more ruins and I do love a good fort. When I drove up the sun was starting the set and the place was besieged by other photographers. They all had fine equipment and severe introversion. This was the first time I found myself flung into a whole group of other photo hounds. I found the experience fascinating. Everyone was polite and weary of each other. The only conversation I could hear was something to the effect of, “Let me know if I am in your way!” “Likewise!” Also people don’t know how to respond when you say likewise or ditto. Lessons learned. Ah well, if they wanted to be left alone I was happy to do so. I wasn’t looking for coffee or conversation anyway.
The fort was bigger than I remembered and had gorgeous stone archways. You could crawl around almost the whole perimeter and see how grandly it was perched there on the rocks overlooking the ocean. I was struck by its majesty. And the beach next to it had some very interesting piles of driftwood. More whimsy photos! But I think the best part of all of this was when I stopped a few hundred feet up the road and found an old battery (?) which I could walk into. When I came out I decided I really should visit the out house before going home so I walked the beach back up towards the fort. That’s when I noticed the moon had come out early and was huge and looming in the sky as if it was just waiting to be plucked like a flower. It had caught the attention of a number of the other photographers and I revealed in this new opportunity. I love the moon but I’ve never taken serious photos of it, especially not wistfully floating above a drop dead gorgeous bay and a tiny New England town. It was a perfect end to a perfect day.
