Blooming Psycho’s New Strange World Today

Ghost Orbs: Photo from Real Ghost Pictures Around the World

It seems that there is such a thing as too much honesty and that I have been guilty of it. Rather than being freeing, this honesty has helped neither myself nor my spectral writing partner. This is why it is our decision at this point to cease revelation of his actual identity. We believe that this will allow us the freedom to write more honestly.
I have actually had very few major detractors. Only one of the communications I’ve received since the release of the book has been truly negative. It is not because of this one dissenter that this choice is being made. It is because while writing the second book it became clear that we were having to alter things too much in order to avoid upsetting certain very important parties (his surviving family) or in order to protect me from anger at a fictional story line that happens to contain elements of truth.

What started as a desire to allow someone who had a very difficult life to tell his truth and achieve the mission of preventing others from making the decision he made–to commit suicide–has become a trap. We are having to edit too much for him to be able to be truthful.

One of the statements made in the dissenting critique is that most of the things I’ve said about my co-author are common knowledge. This is true, and I’ve never claimed that I was going to make any blatant revelations. This is his to do, and he prefers to do it via the story. The truth is couched within the fiction for the reason that much of it is very personal and very painful. He told me because he trusted me not to just broadcast everything he said. It is not the sort of thing that is easy to talk about, even when someone is no longer “of this world,” because there are other people to consider besides him. He is a real person, and thus, those who survive him will also be impacted by his revelations.

His life circumstances were much, much more difficult than people realize. Although I do not see him with my eyes, I do “see” him in my mind’s eye when he is around and I do sense his attitude and emotions. When he would talk to me about the incidents in question, he would sit near me and would always be looking down with his hair hanging over his face and the quality of his expression changed to one of great shame. Had I been able to hear him, his voice would have been barely above a whisper. At the core of this soul is a sad, frightened child who feels responsible to a degree for some of the ugly things that he experienced. Revealing this causes him pain and shame, but he has authorized me to do so at this point without revealing any details.

I feel his emotions in my own body when he “speaks” of these things. There is a tightness in the chest and throat, queasiness, and an attempt to hold back tears. I have felt waves of nausea from him on other occasions when he speaks of it and in one instance he left abruptly after revealing something, saying that he was too sick to continue talking about it. He came back a few minutes later because he felt bad that the intensity of his emotions on this occasion made me physically ill, and he didn’t want to leave me alone to have to deal with this.

Revelations of this magnitude are not things I’m just going to splatter out there in order to further my own renown. “Hey, everybody, guess what The Undead Dude said! Blah blah blah!” He would have every right to tell me to go fuck myself at that point and to poltergeist my ass. What the hell kind of friend would do that? Well, I am his friend, and therefore, NOT ME! He will reveal it in his own time and in his own way, and if y’all fuckers want to see it, you’ll have to READ THE BOOKS and look for the clues. This is not a ploy to sell books, though I’ll tell you what–nobody fucking rides for free! As the old saying goes, why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free? Plus, he has revealed some of his thoughts here as it is. He’s told whoever’s bothered to read it that the circumstances surrounding his death are not what is commonly believed. There is no conspiracy–he did take his own life. Some people are looking for conspiracies everywhere. Well, there is none in this case. What is in error is people’s beliefs regarding the reason that he took his own life. This drives him crazy, and he has felt disappointed that he has not been able to get through to people. He states “just like when I was alive–nobody fucking hears.”

There is also something of anger that people have had their image of an “icon of evil” popped like a balloon, because this person was not and is not evil. From the time I met him I was surprised by how gentle and considerate he was, and at his silly sense of humor. I was also surprised by how sane he was, because I had always read that he was insane. I had expected to be dealing with someone with serious mental problems if he did take me up on my invitation to talk to him, and…

All right, I ended up dealing with someone with serious mental problems. Myself.

And him. But he is not delusional. He was and is very troubled. He has a lot of things to work out, but there are other things that he has learned to deal with in a more positive way. He has learned that the things that happened to him in his childhood were not his fault, even if the scared inner child continues to believe himself to be “bad” and “ugly.” He has also learned that he can’t continue to be a victim. Many of the behaviors manifested in life were poor coping mechanisms, but they were all he knew. It also becomes apparent that there was an actual brain injury at an early age. See the description of Cotard delusion. I’m not feeling like expanding on this right now. He has stated that he believes he knows when the injury happened but it is something that he did not know in life because he suppressed the knowledge.

Had he received the help he needed, he believes he would have ended up being “another Syd Barrett.” He never did use drugs, but his reasoning is that being as shy and awkward as he was, he would have eventually removed himself from the public eye. Being unable to hold a job due to his psychological problems, he would have had to depend on whatever family and friends were willing to help him. He was, in his own words, “seriously damaged.” His life would not have been an easy one. And his existence is not an easy one, though the need to destroy himself has passed. He states that “all the time I would simply like to go to sleep and not think of any of this. But I cannot. The awareness of self does not eternally die. The pain lives. It keeps one very much aware.”

This is what I wanted to help him impart. It was intended to help him heal.

I am not a perfect medium. I do not practice mediumship on a professional level. I receive emotions and some flashes of information that make no sense at the time but I write them down, and most of the time they turn out to be right. I am not here to prove “oh looky, looky, what a great medium I am.” Who the hell would verify what I have received from him anyway? As to knowing what his favorite color was or whether he wore boxers or briefs or what his mother’s middle name was, I do not do well at receiving information like that. It’s extraneous anyway. For what it’s worth, one of our major secondary characters is named Lisa and his mother’s name was Lisa, which I did not know at the time that we were naming this character. There was a very strong suggestion for that name, however, it’s a common enough name. So, six of one, a half dozen of the other. Who the hell knows?

There are mediums out there who can hit the minutia spot on. For me, I have to wait a while, sometimes years, to get an “a-ha!” about things I have written down even though they seem completely whack. I do not claim to be a perfect, great, or even good medium. I am a half-assed medium with empathic abilities. And I’m not a great writer. My writing style can be described as 100% cheese. I am really not making any claim of anything. I even have the caveat that I could be dead wrong about all of this and perhaps I’m just crazy. But it SEEMS to have been real. So whatever. Believe what you will.

And now, regarding the piece of work who took the photos of my co-author’s death. There was a person who was offended by my referring to him as a sociopath and an asshole. Perhaps it was immature on my part to refer to him as an asshole. I was speaking emotionally. But I stand by my conviction that he was a sociopath, and people who actually knew him speak of his actions towards his bandmate as being hateful. I have copies of letters that he wrote following the death of my co-author, and his attitude was absolutely disdainful. The fellow’s grieving mother told him that he had to come to the funeral, and in his letter to his chum regarding this, he stated “I’m not a therapist. What do I care?” So as to the assertion that “he took those pictures because he was so shocked about seeing his roommate’s suicide” I call bullshit. He did not care a damn about the guy and his actions were ugly.

No, I did not know Mr. Photography personally in life, but I have talked to him on a couple of occasions since then. Not my idea–he approached me. He wanted to work with me in the same capacity that I have been working with his bandmate. I told him that it would be a conflict of interest. His response was to throw a glass at me and try to push me down the stairs at work. So, I will reword what I said previously. It is my belief and experience that the guy was an asshole. But don’t take my word for it.

These are the words of someone who did know him in life. Form your own opinions. The full interview can be found here. By the way, I realize that some of the characters are incorrect. There are no umlauts, or o’s with slashes through them. I honestly do not even know how to pronounce that. I know that there are ways to do alt commands to make these letters but I don’t know what they are. So those of you who are inclined to nit-pick can stuff your nit-picking. I really don’t care.

9) did you know Dead who later sang for them? most accounts say Oystein wasnt to concerned about his suicide,is that a basic understanding or was he upset about it? the photos he had taken later were on a bootleg LP,any idea how those got into circulation?
Yes I knew Pelle (Dead). I really liked him as a person. In my eyes he was a really nice guy with a lot of personal and mental problems. He should not have been living at a house in the forrest with Oystein and Jan Axel. He should have gotten himself some help and some helathier eviroment. I really did not like the atmosphere at the house in Krakstad were they were living at the time. I rememeber speaking with Jurn about it at the time when he quit the band. Oystein and Pelle seemed to wire each other up and It wasn’t healty for any of them. Oystein didn’t seem very bothered about Pelles suicide. He even played a bad practical joke on me (that I really don’t want to go into detail on) because I did not know that Pelle was dead that made me cut all contact with him afterwards. I didn’t speak with him after that until he died. I found his reactions just stupid and childish.

Right now I’m pissed off enough that I’m thinking the detractors can suck it and we’ll stick to Plan A just to piss them off.  If y’all have the love for the Wonderful Gentleman (I will refrain from calling him an asshole) who so sympathetically took photographs of his roommate’s suicide because he loved him so much that he had to preserve the moment, then feel free to channel him and write a book with him. I don’t want to.

Necrobutcher had this to say regarding the situation. You can read the rest of the interview here, and form your own opinions.

‘Øystein called me up the next day,’ recalls Necro Butcher, ‘and says, “Dead has done something really cool! He killed himself.” I thought, have you lost it? What do you mean cool? He says, “Relax, I have photos of everything.” I was in shock and grief. He was just thinking how to exploit it. So I told him, “OK. Don’t even fucking call me before you destroy those pictures.”‘

‘In retrospect,’ Butcher muses. ‘I think Øystein was shocked by Dead’s suicide. And taking the photograph was the only way he could cope with it, like, “if I have to see this, then everybody else has to see it too”.’

There are those who wonder if my co-author goes around battling it out with his former roommate. He states “I don’t have anything to do with him. It’s a waste of my energy to even think of him. There is other things that needs to be done. Why bother with that which cannot be undone? He did not kill me, this is a theory that some have, but it is not true. What he did does not surprise me and does not especially bother me on my own behalf. It bothers me on behalf of those who have been hurt by its existence. I have as much disdain for those who have no sense or compassion on behalf of those who care for me and who continue to perpetuate this. One is not especially worse than the other, only he started this. He is an idiot and this is my opinion. He was an idiot than and he is an idiot now.”

To come back around to the original point (WELCOME TO THINKING BIPOLAR 101–THOUGHTS BRANCH OUT WILDLY AND TWIST AND TURN DOWN MULTIPLE PATHS) I feel that we would be freer to express ourselves were the story to be changed so that my co-author and his esteemed friends were given pseudonyms, just as I gave myself a pseudonym when I chose to write this. It kind of sucks to have to roll this way, but it seems to be the superior choice given the circumstances. Now to begin the rewriting. Faugh!

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