Jun. 19th, 2020

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It's Friday, Eerie fans, and it's a great time to look back on all the sweet fanworks you've created over the years. Why not revisit some sweet artwork, admire someone's crafting efforts or leave an appreciative comment on an uploaded video?
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For this challenge, create a fanwork based on one of the (sixteen!) Eerie, Indiana tie-in books.
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The city of Menomonie has just caught the eye of a online travel and entertainment magazine, and not because of its award-winning university, its picturesque and historic downtown arts center, or the fact its waterpark shares a name with the fictional African home of the Black Panther.

No, this western Wisconsin city thrilled the folks at Thrillist because it’s apparently been a vortex of weird news over the years. Under the headline “This Adorable Midwest Town Is Like the Twilight Zone of Weird News,” the June 18 article by Janelle Lassalle recounts a number of odd occurrences that attracted the national media spotlight to Menomonie, including the escape of a circus elephant, the so-called “Smiley Face Bomber,” the theft of Star Wars film reels, and the robbery of the Kraft State Bank.

“Menomonie seems prone to the wild and bizarre, a place whose mix of wholesome and strange comes off as a cross between Eerie, Indiana; Twin Peaks; and Gravity Falls.” –Thrillist.com

While the fact these events occurred in 2002, 2002, 1999, and 1932, respectively, might blunt the article’s suggestion that Menomonie is “America’s weird news capital,” it’s still nice to get the attention of an online publication with 5.5 million Facebook followers. (The only “weird” stories cited from the past decade is the 2019 arrest of a guy who tried to parachute from a 300-foot transmission tower.)

Surprisingly, the article leaves out one of the stranger Menomonie headlines of the current millennium: The June 2002 theft of a 400-pound fiberglass moose from town’s Moose Lodge. At the time, that particular bizarre news item caught the attention of the popular Canadian radio news program As It Happens, which subsequently used Menomonie as a geographic reference point for oddball American stories. (Hey, Canadians love their moose!)

The Thrillist article notes that British writer (and erstwhile Dunn County resident) Neil Gaiman drew inspiration for his fantasy novel American Gods from the Midwest in general and the Menomonie area in particular, which certainly burnishes Menomonie’s quirky cred.

“Menomonie seems prone to the wild and bizarre,” Lassalle writes, “a place whose mix of wholesome and strange comes off as a cross between Eerie, Indiana; Twin Peaks; and Gravity Falls.” She goes on to mention some of Menomonie’s less-quirky (but nonetheless cool) points of interest, including Brewery Nonic and Zymurgy Brewing.
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IN THE SUMMER OF 2002, AN AGITATED PACHYDERM took a self-guided tour of Menomonie, Wisconsin. The escaped circus elephant strolled down Main Street, though a bank parking lot and a tree-lined park, past a Burger King, and onto the local college campus. The joywalk ended when trainers brought a second elephant to the scene to engage in a playful water fight, which calmed the creature's nerves enough to get it back to the circus.

In most places, a gargantuan land mammal strolling through a sleepy downtown would be enough weird news to last generations. In Menomonie, it was just another Monday.

LOCATED 30 MINUTES WEST OF EAU CLAIRE, Menomonie is the kind of town where doors remain unlocked, the local baseball team is an institution, and pie socials are community-wide events.

It's home to the University of Wisconsin-Stout and the historic Mabel Tainter Center for the Arts, which CNN deemed one of the world's “most spectacular theaters.” Miles of scenic hiking trails, lakes, waterways, and farms flank the western Wisconsin town. Main Street is lined with shops and restaurants, some with multigenerational roots, some owned by local Hmong residents who relocated to the region.

“We have vegan restaurants, coffee shops, multiple breweries, sushi, Hmong restaurants… Places that wouldn't usually be available in a small Wisconsin town thrive here,” says Ryan Verdon, owner of the local Brewery Nonic.

Maybe that’s why it’s hard to imagine that bullets flew through this quaint street as the “stalwart citizens” of Menomonie pursued a gang of bank robbers in 1932. A year earlier, “the human fly” scaled Menomonie’s Raulf Hotel. Yet that one-two punch of scary and surreal, coupled with the area's own lore, laid the groundwork of Menomonie as a headline-making vortex of the unusual.

“IT'S LIKE AMERICA’S WEIRD NEWS CAPITAL," says Rachelle Lynn Gordon, who grew up in Menomonie. "Even Norm MacDonald gave us a shout out on Update.”

Indeed, Menomonie seems prone to the wild and bizarre, a place whose mix of wholesome and strange comes off as a cross between Eerie, Indiana; Twin Peaks; and Gravity Falls. No wonder British writer Neil Gaiman partially based American Gods on the area: In fact, he's lived nearby since 1992.

The human fly and the Kraft State Bank Robbery -- the latter the likely result of Menomonie's reputation as a place that looked the other way when gangsters like John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson passed through -- kicked off a legacy of WTF occurances, making Menomonie a mainstay of news reports long before the internet turned small-town quirks into a mainstay.

Want something frightening and eccentric? In 2002 the Smiley Face Bomber, an art student at the university, perpetrated 18 pipe-bombings, telling police had planned to map out a giant smiley face in craters across America. Creepily absurd? Anthony Allen Scholfield was convicted of stealing 854 sets of undergarments, earning him the title of "the panty thief" upon conviction in 2006.

There's the tale of a group of kids who, in 1999 snuck into a theater to watch Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace, then were apprehended for stealing the reels (they were not, somehow, the inspiration for the Star Wars heist film Fanboys). Last year, a BASE jumper was arrested for felony trespass after leaping from a tower in town. The apprehension was made easier when he was found dangling from power lines.

The quirks, lore, and local customs aren't exclusive to Menomonie so much as embedded in the regional DNA. That photo above? That's Gordon as a child in nearby Glenwood, celebrating Rustic Lore Day, an annual celebration of "countryside or rural...traditions held by a group and passed on from person to person,” though what tradition is being celebrated above is yet to be determined.

Meanwhile, in the countryside -- where farmsteads double as plein-air pizza parlors and heavy metal is on tap at Zymurgy Brewing -- they say nearby Devil’s Punchbowl is haunted and visited by gnomes.

“There’s that tiny off-kilter nature in the Midwest that’s in the details,” Gaiman told the Star Tribune of his adopted home in 2017. “I would enjoy stopping at a little restaurant somewhere and half the place would be selling peculiar stuff like … warrior princess dolls. That’s weird.”

Perhaps the weirdest part of this all is how truly not-weird Menomonie actually is. Here, the local Conagra factory hands out free cups of its famous Swiss Miss hot chocolate during the Winter Daze parade. The Menomonie Blue Caps draw crowds to games played in vintage uniforms and using no gloves, just as they did in their heyday from 1882-1941.

It's the kind of deeply wholesome town where bake sales, fish fries, and outdoor concerts are the norm. It just so happens that the likelihood of those events being interrupted by some Twilight-zone occurrence are exponentially higher than normal.

And for locals, well, they seem pretty nonplussed by -- and generally dismissive of -- the wacky footnotes in the town's history: of the gnomes and elephants, comic-book villains and would-be daredevils.

“People here actually care about Menomonie. I have always believed in surrounding myself with people who give a shit," says Verdon. “People are very friendly and neighborly here. We look out for each other. It's pretty charming, actually.”
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The trees grew thicker here, and what little sunlight filtered down through the overhanging branches became green and murky the further it penetrated.

Knots in the gnarled wood looked like screaming human faces, and in the spots where the bark had rubbed away, viscous red sap oozed like blood from a welling wound, filling the air with the copper tang of old pennies.

The path that Janet was on was lined with sea glass, and despite the blazing August heat and the many days that had passed without rain, the ground under her feet was damp, and smelled of salt.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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The Harvest King was waiting for her beneath the spreading canopy of an old oak tree. His crown of green was bright with gold leaves of almost-ripened corn and in the places where it's twisting vines grew straight out of his head, blood-bright berries clotted and clustered.

"You came," he said, and it's almost the voice that Janet remembers, undercut with the howl of a hunting wolf and the wind up on the mountain.

He holds out his hand, which is pale and pink and human, and when she reaches for it she touches the whirring blades of a thresher.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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Janet jerks her hand back, her eyes full and spilling over with the shock and the pain, and a sense of betrayal that almost drives out the crashing grey waves that have nearly drowned the brown of her irises.

Her fingers are hot and slick with her own blood, and even now it's a relief to feel the heat and see the colour, because it means the Baitshop hasn't yet managed to crawl all the way inside her.

Then the deep gouges are healing, and instead of scar tissue there are thin lines of gleaming scale in the knitted flesh.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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"Oh," says the Harvest King, speaking through her ex-boyfriend's face, and if she needed proof that this isn't really Marshall - at least, not right now, and she tries not to think that it might not be ever again - it's in the smooth, even tone of his voice.

Marshall, who tensed up if he thought Melanie was playing pinfinger a little too fast, wouldn't be this calm after almost maiming her.

Although, given what the things in the lake have done in service of their "repairs", maybe it still counts as a maiming.

She flexes her hand, whole but still damaged.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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The fox had gotten into the Lost and Found box and built itself a burrow there. It poked it's head out from under a heavy winder coat, the bright colours faded but the fleece lining still thick and warm.

"Whaaaat?" it growled, it's tone more akin to a sleep-deprived teenager than a talking animal.

It opened one amber eye, prepared to give the Loyal Order's bartender a piece of it's mind and perhaps a taste of it's small, sharp teeth.

The Kernel stared down at him, bushy eyebrows raised beneath the impressive weight of his jewelled and ornate Corn Hat.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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The sound of sausages hissing in the heavy cast-iron pan drifted out through the hairline crack in the almost-closed kitchen door, accompanied by the savoury aroma of fried grease and onions.

In the living room, a great Hellhound sat inside a circle of salt, commanded to stay and none too happy about it.

Dash, who had been similarly banished, could sympathise.

"What do you say?" he asked the massive three-headed beast. "I break the salt-line, you rush in there and distract him, and I raid the fridge while you do it?"

Sparky's three heads drooled, and his eyes shone red.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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The wind was howling outside, and now and then above the unceasing shriek and roar they could hear other sounds.

Rattling came from behind the tightly-drawn drapes as the storm flung up handfuls of gravel to skitter across the glass.

Something scraped along almost the entire length of the house, probably just a tree branch but the noises put Marshall in mind of bony fingers twisted into skeletal claws, so that he shivered and burrowed deeper into the nest of blankets piled over the sofa.

Simon knelt beside the old VCR, still blinking 12:00. He held up another videotape.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Weather

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All the cushions had been removed from the old sofa, leaving only the frame bookended by tattered and threadbare arms in leaking upholstery.

The cushions themselves, faded and stained and bearing the patchwork scars of a dozen amateurish attempts at repair, were stacked into two neat columns directly in front of the settee.

An eiderdown in a cover of royal blue stretched across the entire thing, and a single lamp blazed just beyond the entrance, casting a warm soft glow against the tired fabric walls.

Simon set the plate of cookies Mrs. Teller had given him down, and climbed inside.

Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Whenever she made brownies now, Marilyn Teller always added the peanut butter chips last, sprinkling them over the top of brownie batter just after it began to cook.

She watched as the golden-yellow drops began to melt, deforming in the heat of both the oven and the semi-solid cake mix below them. She used a spatula to nudge them here and there, herding the greatest concentration into the furthermost corner of the pan, and then dropped in a few more for good measure.

Simon always liked the crisp edges of a corner piece best, and peanut butter was his favourite.

Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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The sun had risen hours ago, and though it was still early in the morning by every single one of Marshall's watches, the heat in his bedroom was stifling.

He rose, flinging off the thin coverlet with it's hand-scrawled mathematical notations designed to induce a deep sleep while also keeping the Sandman's gritty fingers out of the sleeper's dreams. Apparently it's protective qualities didn't do anything to combat the lack of air conditioning.

When he pulled back the curtains, the light outside speared through the glass like one of Algernon the Invincible's finishing moves. Marshall ducked back, cursing the summer.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Weather

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It wasn't that the Garbage Men were faster than she was, Janet thought, bounding through drifts of red-gold leaf litter that layered the forest floor in a crunching, crackling blanket of noisy traitors.

It was just that, as the arbiters of all that was correct and orderly in matters of time and space, they knew exactly where she would be at any given moment.

She pushed up the sleeve of her oversized sweater, checked the three watches strapped there. Clock-faces of sea-glass and sand stared back, unnumbered, handless and blank.

Janet knew she had to get back to the lake.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: The Children

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One of the Time-o-Saurs had broken loose, tearing through a weak point in the net of dino-proof twine that held their reality separate from what Marshall still, despite everything, thought of as "regular Eerie."

The first thing it had done was come for the time canoe, still stored at the very back of the cupboard under the stairs in Marshall's parents' house.

Luckily, the regular canoe his dad had bought under the influence of The Donald's subliminal advertising had acted as an accidental decoy, and the Time-o-Saur had left clutching it's worthless orange prize, leaving their secret weapon behind it.

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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It was 3pm on a warm day in the middle of June, and already the streetlights were on.

Strange trees loomed dark and uncanny against a grey and louring sky, and as the wind whistled through bare branches and stirred drifts of sun-bleached garbage from the overflowing gutters that ran alongside the pavement, Marshall Teller zipped his green overcoat up as far as it would go and jammed chilled fingers even deeper into his pockets.

The last sunrise had been almost a month ago, replaced by perpetual gloom that waxed and waned on a twenty-four hour cycle. Wally was missing.

Ongoing Verse: Pay Attention

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Weather

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