I made a joke about Waynesville not being very magical. But after thinking more about it why wouldn’t Waynesville be a magical land? What place should I think of as being magic?
Places of power I’ve encountered –
A diner in the backwoods of Georgia
Middle of nowhere in upstate New York
A hotel in Omaha
A lake near in rural California
It makes sense that magic would be in out of the way places where people don’t wreck them by not believing in magic. I think.
I missed the annual sauerkraut festival but I did get to read a plaque about John Evans, Waynesville’s most famous son. He founded both Northwestern University and the University of Denver, was the Governor of Colorado and was the brains behind the Sand Creek Massacre. That’s a hell of a dating app profile.
The hippy commune from the 50s that Chubby visited is now a regenerative tree-range chicken farm. Not free-range, tree-range. I don’t know what that means. The owner with designer glasses, straw hat that probably cost $150 and luxury fashion coveralls would have loved to tell me all about it. I told him I was interested in the history of the place more than the chicken farming aspect.
He sighed and grabbed a scrap book off a shelf in the greeting area. He said that got tired of “murder people” coming here and asking him about it so he made a book he could shove at them. I got defensive and self-conscious and told him that I wasn’t a murder tourist. He said just to leave the book on the table when I was done and went back to whatever a regenerative tree chicken farmer does.
On November 21st 1963 the three men and five women living at Crombey Farms were discovered murdered. One of the women had been decapitated. All of the victims had been mutilated and stabbed dozens of times.
Most of the articles speculated that the eight murder victims were part of a cult. They made a lot of hay out of the fact that local Waynevillians told any reporter they could the eight murder victims would cast spells on them and tried to poison them with the produce they sold.
No culprits were ever identified. Doesn’t sound like anyone was ever considered as a suspect.
That’s pretty fucked up but it doesn’t tell me anything about Chubby or insect spirits.
Rocket Cat 