[Above: Ah, now we're getting artistic. Here is a deep and powerful image of a whale.]

[Below: Why don't I leave you with this... this happened in 2011, some couple took pictures of the female climbing inside a dead horse 'to feel at one with it'. It was in the news... the 21 year old and her boyfriend owned the horse, which was 32 years old, and shot it due to its bad health. Well, at least they wore gloves... haha. Freaky ass world. Kali Yuga.]

Kali Yuga insanity.

[Above: Here he is, I think he looks like an old movie star.]

I was given the trunk with a lot of photos and some odds and ends after he died. I'll share some of it with you in this listing. He would tell me stories about being in the CCC (the Civilian Conservation Corps was a voluntary public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942). You were supposed to be a minimum of 18 years old, well he lied about his age, he was really 16. He didn't look 16, more like mid-20s. Big and square jawed. A handsome guy. He traveled about the United States, building roads, bridges, buildings and much more. He told me about these auctions they would have with pies. Except the pies represented a women who you were going to have sex with. That was his first experience with a woman. During these days in the CCC was also the first time he got drunk. And the last time. Believe it or not he never drank again. He even had a picture of being held up by two guys, so drunk he couldn't walk.

[Above: Drunk as a skunk. Here he is, as mentioned above, far left.]

[Above: A large scroll photograph of my friend at the CCC work camp. I marked him for you.]

Once back home he got in a fight one night with two guys. He ended up winning and kicked their asses. Well a boxing promoter saw the fight and asked him if he would be interested in boxing. He agreed. This was in the 1930s. Apparently he was pretty good, he even fought in Chicago on the under card of the German boxer Max Schmeling. He told me after the fights Schmeling came up to him and said

'You're a German boy aren't you?'

He proudly answered 'yes' and shook his hand. Two good German boys in the 1930s. Dangerous. I like it.

[Above: Here's two photos from his boxing days. What a handsome devil.]

He had a box, he told me, sometime in the late 1930s, with all his boxing stuff. Well he also had an Irish wife... and she liked to drink. She would get angry while she drank and one night decided to burn all of his beloved boxing stuff. Argh. So I didn't get to see any of that. All of his pictures, records and old gear, medals -- GONE. What a loss.

He still had the body of a strong man. I'm not kidding you. Even at 91 years old, he still was built looking. Lean and strong. He told me a boxer never loses his punch. Everything else was stolen by age, but the punch, it never left. Whether that is true or not I'm not sure.

He told me about his work during WWII at a bomber plant. That was where he met his second and final wife. He loved her more than anything. He had five children. He told me about his house and that when he bought it the street didn't even have street lights. He would walk a few miles home every night from work in the dark. One night he was walking along and 'BOOM'! He gets hit right in his face. HARD. He gets a black eye. He thinks someone hit him. But it turned out to be a pole he walked right into in the dark!

[Above: My friend during the CCC days. 16-17 years old!]

He had the oldest house for miles. In the old days all around the house was farmland. He even showed me the old deeds. There were records starting in the 1880s recording everyone who bought and sold the house. It was an interesting book with maps of the old land and other information.

His old house was large and run down. It was once beautiful. I saw pictures of the old days when he was younger and could keep up the property. It was like a fairy tale beautiful old house surrounded by thousands of blooming flowers and nature of all kinds. Rock covered pathways led through the trees to other parts of the yard. One side was a pet cemetery. He told me even chickens were buried there, from the old days. But it was mostly cats and lots of dogs. In some places I could see black plastic coming through the dirt. I asked him what it was and he told me, kinda grimly, those were the bags the pets were buried in. Through time the dirt eroded and began to bring them back up... kind of grisly, eh?

And the house itself was an odd, old place. And he had some rather frightening stories of the house being haunted. He told me some stories that were genuinely eerie, not to mention freaky as hell and well, I'll admit, scary!

He showed me a place on the house, at the side of stone stairs, where every dog he ever had (he loved dogs and was never without at least one) scratched and clawed at this particular spot. It was just cement. He told me sometimes the dogs would claw it until their paws bled. Eerie...

[Above: An unknown woman from the trunk.]

He told me dozens and dozens of instances of strange things. Like boot prints in the snow starting in the middle of the yard and then ending suddenly in the middle of the snow? Okay that's strange. He told me they would sometimes find blood in the snow. The whole family experienced this haunting and I eventually got to hear more of their stories too.

I even got to experience something for myself while sitting in the house. How to explain this... we would sit in his kitchen at his table, and it had a view of the front door and a big window leading to it. Sitting there one evening I caught something out of the corner of my eye. Someone walked by the window and was going to be knocking on the door any second. Except I got up and walked to the door and no one was there. I'd swear I saw someone walk by that window to the door. Well, it turned out this was a common occurrence. Very strange.

I'll tell you a very freaky, rather frightening story. Some of his stories went back decades, but this one was only from a few years ago. Okay, the set up of his bedroom... it had two doors leading into it, one was from the living room and the other was connected to a bathroom, which then connected to the kitchen.

Well one night he was laying in bed trying to sleep, alone in the house. He had two small dogs which he would put in the bathroom at night. As he lay there in the darkness he heard faint talking... It sounded like a deep gravelly voice, but muffled. He couldn't make it out, so he sat up in bed and listened closer...

It sounded like it was coming from inside his house!!!

Coming from the direction of the bathroom/kitchen door. He got out of bed and walked over to the door. Since the electricity didn't work in his bedroom he used a flashlight. I know, that makes it even creepier. But he didn't turn it on yet, he just silently walked over to the door.

He could hear two voices behind the door... gruff, deep and low voices talking to each other, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. If someone is in there why aren't the dogs barking? Hmm...

Then he heard it...

The voice was louder now.

IT SAID HIS NAME!!

'FRED!'

The voice called him by his name and told him to open the door!!!

Being the stubborn old guy that he is, guess what he did? Yep, he opened the door!!!

And what does he see. His two dogs are sitting right in front of the door looking up at him.

Nothing else was there.

And get this: one of his dogs, a pug, he told me he got the feeling it was him talking!!! Something talking through it... fucking creepy.

[Above: A spooky looking picture from the trunk. Click on it to see more.]

Okay, another story.

First let me tell you about his basement. It had stone, rough cut stairs leading down. It looked like something from medieval times. Dungeon-like. The basement was spooky. Full of cobwebs and old discarded stuff. The basement was shaped like a 'U'. It started in one end and halfway through the 'U' was a door. Beyond the door was an old furnace room, more spiders and old stuff, and eventually, at the end of the 'U', was an old fruit cellar. It still even had a few forgotten old pale blue canning jars on the spider web-encrusted shelf. One of the jars was dated back in the early 1980s. Fruit from a long forgotten summer. Canned by a long dead human hand.

But back to our tale. Back to the 'U'. Down the medieval stairs and half way through the 'U' were a washer and dryer. One day he was down there bending over taking clothes out of the dryer. Suddenly, he feels a tap on his shoulder. He looks up to see someone run into the door halfway through the 'U', leading to the fruit cellar!!! He said it looked like a women in an old fashioned dress. Well, crazy ass hell, he walked back there after her.

No one was there. C R E E P Y.

[Above: An old World War One picture I found in the trunk. It is a rather ominous picture of the side of a German tank. You can see the Iron Cross painted on the side.]

His family also experienced a lot of supernatural things. A few of them rather horrific. Before his wife died she was sick and slept in her own room. One night she woke up to someone touching her and saw someone standing right beside her... she looked up and saw that it was her husband, Fred... except he had an evil look on his face... and also a look of 'let's have sex'... she said she knew that look, even though they hadn't had sex in decades. She and her husband hadn't been getting along, so she balled her fist and lightly punched out at his stomach... her hand passed right through him! He then walked out of the room. She died shortly after this.

His wife had a dog, the same dog that was 'talking' in an earlier story. She loved the dog with all her heart. It's name was Gloria. After she died Fred came home one evening to find that the dog was gone. It didn't greet him at the door like usual. He called out for it. Nothing. So he searched the house... nothing. It was gone. What the...?

So he sat there and tried to rationalize what could have happened to it? It was crazy. There was no way the dog could have got out of his locked house. So what the hell? Well there was one place he hadn't looked. One room. His wife's room. He hadn't gone in the room for months, since she died. It was exactly how she had left it. So he walked up the creaking old stairs and to the old brown wooden door of his wife's room. He knew there was no way the dog could be in there. But he still had to check. So he opened the door and what do you think he found? Gloria, the dog, standing in his wife's room!!! Very creepy.

[Above: Wow, this is creepy. Another World War One picture. What in the hell could this be? You can see a boot, a gun stock and even a British helmet amongst the bones and skulls.]

Another story is from his daughter and grandson. This is the earliest story so far, tracing back to when Fred still had his grown daughter living with him. Well, the daughter and his grandson were coming home late one evening. Her father was gone from the house and no one else was in the house. The house had a large steel gate around the property, which was about an acre. They parked the car right outside the gate and walked up to the entrance of the property.

There was blood everywhere on the gate. I mean EVERYWHERE. They continued onto the property and saw that the blood was all over the stone trail that led up to the house. They almost expected someone dead on the porch of the house. She said though 'someone must have had a terrible car accident and stumbled up to the door looking for help.' There was blood leading up the stairs and onto the porch of the house. There were even drips of blood all over the door and on the doorknob...

The door was locked but they walked into the dark house with a measure of fear... but the house was normal. The next day she carefully watched the news on television. No car accidents. No shootings. She never found out what had left all the blood.

[Above: Shit, another creepy picture from World War One. These are so strange, I'd love to know the story behind them. I've never seen anything like this from WWI. How was this soldier allowed to just rot away, in full uniform. Why wasn't he buried?]

One time I saw blood on the property with my own eyes. It was winter and I was walked out to the old pet cemetery in back of the house. Before I got there I saw blood drips and boot prints, like heavy, large work boot prints, in the snow. It was out in the middle of the yard. Like someone just appeared and walked six steps, dripping blood, and then disappeared. There were no prints leading up to it. The snow was untouched for maybe a hundred feet and then suddenly the blood and prints. Impossible. Yet it was...

As I already mentioned, the house had beautiful gardens of flowers and plants of all kinds in the early days. One time our man of the story and his daughter and her boyfriend were outside working on the yard. Eventually the boyfriend had to urinate so he went into the house. While he was doing his business he heard someone stomp fast and hard down the stairs. It scared him at first and surprised him. One of those outside must have followed him inside and went up the stairs for something...

When he got back outside he asked 'Did one of you just go upstairs? They told him that they hadn't! Then who the hell just ran down the stairs?!

[Above: Wow what in the hell is this?? Naked bodies... it looks like the pictures from WW2 they've shoved down our throats. I've never seen this kind of thing from WWI, ever. What the hell could this be?]

There was another time that the old wife and one of her daughters were alone in the house, sitting in the living room watching television when a very loud dragging noise came from upstairs. They said it sounded like a heavy piece of furniture being dragged across a room. They sat there scared waiting for something else...

A short time after the daughter who lived there got home. Her bedroom was upstairs, where the noise came from. They didn't tell her of the noise! So she went upstairs to her room, not knowing what had just happened (if they had told her she never would have went up there! Yeah it was a dirty trick). Nothing was out of order. No furniture had been dragged. This would happen several more times in their lives. Loud banging or dragging from upstairs.

The daughter had an attic trapdoor in the ceiling of her closet. She sometimes would hear strange noises in the night from the attic. The attic trapdoor was just a wooden board on the ceiling in the closet. It had a wooden trim and was painted. If you moved it you could see the old paint on the edges. When they painted they didn't paint the whole board, just what was showing. So if you moved the loose board you could see the part on the edges not painted. Well sometimes she would hear noises up there, like someone walking across the attic. Sometimes she would check the attic entrance to see it had moved. She would know this because the old paint was showing. Freaky. I'd have put damn padlocks on it!

Let's see, what else is there...?

Here's one of the creepiest ones... One night Fred was laying in bed watching TV like he usually did. The lights were all off and it was around 11:00 when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye... He sat up and tried to focus his eyes on what he saw...

It was a form of a man bent over facing the opposite wall. He said he was moving his arms and it looked like he was going through clothes that were piled near the wall. As he watched this the man slowly faded away.

Holy shit. I would have run out of there so fast. But he just went to sleep. Some... shadowy figure frantically going through my clothes in the dark... Oh my god.

[Above: Here is another photo scroll of his days in the CCC.]

[Above: Here's a picture of some of the boys in the CCC. Check out the studs on their shoes!]

[Above: Here is a picture of the camp barracks.]

[Above: The CCC boys carving out America.]

[Above: Real men, unlike the pansies of today.]

[Above: A CCC camp called 'Camp Devils Den'. It also says 'Hells Angels' on it! ]

[Above: A handsome devil. This was around the time of his boxing days.]

[Above: Side view.]

[Above: Not sure about this one, but it is a pretty cool look into those days.]

[Above: This is Fred's father and maybe his mother. He was from Germany. Check out that cool chair.]

[Above: I don't know who this was... but she is a cutie!]

[Above: There's Fred in the middle, the youngest. He would outlive all of those in the picture, not to mention the person taking this photo. Shit, probably everyone on the block too!]

[Above: This is his brother (on the left) and his father. His brother would become a professional photographer and even have his own studio. A lot of the photos in the trunk were in fact developed in his brother's studio.]

[Above: Some of his brothers and sister.]

[Above: Wow, some real men working on the railroad. These guys are so cool-looking and strong. If they could see what has happened to their country...]

[Above: The baby is our man Fred. That's his brother Alfred, who would later fight in WW2 in the Pacific.]

[Above: Wow check out this bar. That's his dad on the far right.]

[Above: I think this is his sister.]

[Above: A family shot. Once again he is the baby. Check out his pretty sister in the back middle.]

[Above: Our man yawning on his dad's lap.]

[Above: Still on his dad's lap. His sister in the back left looks so pretty!!! I like the way his dad looked too, rugged and serious and there always seemed to be a hint of sadness on his face. He tragically died shortly after these pictures... he went to Chicago to look for work and a car jumped a curb and killed him. The family must have been devastated.]

[Above: Here's a colorized picture. Fred's wife actually worked at a studio colorizing photos. It was a big thing back then.]

[Above: I found this photo on the bottom of the chest. Wow. Time had nearly destroyed it, but I saved it and put it on the internet for the world to see. This is his grandma and grandpa.]

[Above: CCC camp 'Devils Den' newsletter.]

[Above: CCC camp 'Devils Den' newsletter, reverse.]

[Above: CCC camp 'Devils Den' publication.]

[Above: CCC camp 'Devils Den' safety bulletin.]

[Above: CCC discharge paper, front.]

[Above: CCC discharge paper, reverse.]

[Above: Envelope sent to the CCC, January 1935. The postage stamp and the advertising stamp seen here are not the NRA (National Rifle Association) known today, but the 'National Recovery Administration'. This NRA was an agency established by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. The goal of the administration was 'to eliminate "cut throat competition" by bringing industry, labor, and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices.']

[Above: Letter from a friend writing from home, November 1933.]

[Above: Letter from a friend in the CCC, January 1935.]

[Above: There were various old things in the trunk as well. Here are a handful of trinkets. That weird thing on the top right is a lighter and a mechanical pencil.]

But... that's not the end of the story. My friend Fred died at 91 years old. He died of natural causes one evening. I saw him up at the hospital the day before he left us. He was alert and talking on the phone when I arrived to see him. He was happy and gave me a hug. I hadn't seen him in some months. I guess I had been busy with life and Mourning the Ancient. We talked about what we were going to do when he got out of there. It made him happy that I was back from my little disappearance.

I learned from his daughter that he had signed a 'Do not resuscitate' at the hospital. That meant if his heart stopped they would not try to bring him back with CPR. It surprised me because he loved life more than just about anyone I had ever met. He had had many heart attacks, had a pace maker and heart stints and had survived it all.

It made me really sad because the next day after my visit I was told he decided to change his 'Do not resuscitate'. He wanted to live now. He had been so lonely those last months during my hiatus and when he found out I was back and we made plans it changed his outlook.

His appearance had really declined in those last few months. Age had really caught up with him. He looked like skin on bones. But he was still lively. His golden spirit still shined. As it did until the end. I went to the hospital the night he died... but I was too late. I entered the room and a nurse sitting outside his room whispered to me 'You know what happened?' Has someone told you?'

Well I had just talked to one of Fred's family members and they told me he wasn't doing good. So I answered 'yes' and went into the room.

I wasn't expecting what I saw. My friend, Fred, laying on a hospital bed, dead. One of his family members was standing back from the bed silently... He still had all of his I.V.s in his arms. His heart had finally stopped. That powerful, golden heart that had beaten without fail since 1917. That yawning little baby in his father's arms... gone. Just like that. He had outlived his entire immediate family. Outlived all of his friends. He lay silent by the window of the hospital room.

I loved him more than my own family that had died. More than my grandmother when she died. He loved me like a daughter and more. He had wanted to leave me in his will. He went to his lawyer one day and left me everything. His house. Car. Savings. 91 years of belongings...

I told him no. I didn't want it. I made him change the will back to his surviving children.

So there he laid. They told me when his heart stopped they did CPR chest compressions for twenty minutes on him. But he was gone.

I fought back my tears and just stood in the doorway for a few long minutes. I couldn't stay in that hospital room so I left and went on a long night drive.

That was it. The end. Or was it?

No, remarkably it wasn't. Fred and I had talked about death many times over the years. We made a deal that whoever dies first would send a sign to the person still living. I reminded him of our deal numerous times over the years.

That night after driving around for a while I came home and thought about things. A few hours went by and eventually I went into my kitchen for something. I saw in the semi-darkness a blinking red light. It was the light of my answering machine. It meant that there was a message. I thought 'well that is weird'. I had used the phone since I got home and there were no messages. I didn't hear the phone ring... hmm...

I pressed play on the answering machine.

Nothing.

The machine was locked up. It wouldn't do anything. Like it was broken. So I looked on the phone sitting next to it. The caller ID read a name.

It was the name of my friend!

What the...?

But oddly it didn't have a number, which was impossible. Even if someone's name didn't come up on the caller ID it still said 'unknown number'. But it didn't. Just his name. Oh my god. My heart raced. It was also missing any other information, like time of call.

A chill went down my spine and my eyes filled with wonder. Fred had remembered our deal. My god this was his message!

Insanity. I used a different phone and called my friend and she raced over to my house. I thought 'I should get a camcorder and record this'... but I didn't, I thought it is frozen and the caller ID still said his name, it wasn't going anywhere.

How wrong I was. By the time my friend arrived it was back to normal. And the caller ID with just Fred's name on it... gone. The answering machine was no longer locked up. I cursed myself for not recording it.

I know some of you won't believe this story. I wouldn't have either if I hadn't experienced it myself. It changed the way I think about things. About death. And life.

Fred was still out there. Somewhere. But where? How in the hell could he have sent me this message. How could a 'soul' have gotten into the phone lines and left his name on my caller ID!? It sounds absurd. Yet, it was true. What exactly was this thing called 'death'?

I guess we would all find out sooner or later. But I didn't want to wait that long. He had reached out to me from death. What else could they do? What exactly were the rules? I thought about all the angles. I just couldn't fathom it. It was a curtain we weren't meant to peek behind. But it drove me crazy thinking about it. I couldn't believe it. Yet, it was true. It defied logic as I'd known it. It made me rethink many of my beliefs.

It made his death so much easier.

I knew he was out there.

That only part of him had died.

That we'd meet again.

Our love and friendship had beaten death.

[Above: Fred and me. You'll notice I have a black/cut eye. I had just been almost killed by a drunk driver. Even though I had my seat belt on my face crashed into the steering wheel. Well, it's not a very flattering picture, but I wanted you to see it anyway. This was taken a few years before he died.]