Microwave Mansion

Well Tyrone Shoelaces was plumb dumbfounded by the coincidence of literally stumbling into a resident parapsychologist just moments after a possible ghost-sighting. I’d read about such anomalous coincidences in my Charles Fort books, but an anomalous coincidence involving an anomalous doctor? That’s double-Fortean if you ask The ‘Laces. Anyway, Dr. Duke McBaron, though unusually small and with a slightly disquieting sort of flame in his pupils, had a doctorly manner and I trusted him. And after all, he was a housemate. I led him back to my bedroom and played him my tape. He reached his conclusion almost instantaneously…

Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. (for the latin Parapsychologiae Doctor, or “teacher of parapsychology”): Wow! I mean, WOW!
Tyrone Shoelaces: You see something Doctor?
Dr. DMC: What you have captured here, Tyrone, on this 1970s VHS tape of yours, is what we in the field of parapsychology refer to as a focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm; a Class Five, full torso, free roaming, vaporous apparition!
TS: Well huckabuck, sucka. You sure sound like you know what you’re talking about.
Dr. DMC: Ahem, I hold advanced degrees from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program (unfortunately closed in 2007), and the University of Arizona’s VERITAS Research Program. I’ve conducted research at the Institute of Parascience, the Rhine Research Center and Institute for Parapsychology, and the Institute of Noetic Sciences, as well as several British institutions including the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh, the Parapsychology Research Group at Liverpool Hope University, the Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology Research Unit of Liverpool John Moores University, the Center for the Study of Anomalous Psychological Processes at the University of Northampton, and the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths University of London. In addition I am a proud and active member of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), the Parapsychological Association (PA), and, of course, the International Fortean Organization (INFO).
TS: Did you say Fortean Organization?
Dr. DMC: Most certainly.
TS: Swanky.
Dr. DMC: But none of that is important right now. Sir, you have captured videographic evidence of a paranormal phenomenon of immense proportions!
TS: [To himself] Good thing I didn’t try to bake the tape.
Dr. DMC: [Furrows brow in confusion, then moves on.] Let me break down for you what’s going on here. We’ll start from the beginning of the tape. [Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. commandeers the VCR remote control.] Here a clearly very much alive Sammy Stephens verily coruscates onto the Ellen Show stage to rapturous studio audience reaction. Now, not being an authority on your standard terrestrial-type phenomena, I feel ill-qualified to characterize the physical movements that the human Mr. Stephens performs at this point, except to say with some impossible-to-mask admiration that they themselves border on the paranormal!
TS: Cold freakin’ it.
Dr. DMC: Confirmed. But now then at approximately 43 seconds into the tape is when Mr. Stephens finally settles down into his seat. This is the critical moment. Ms. DeGeneres says hello to him and simultaneously places her hand on his knee with a telling sort of deliberateness: the death-touch.

TS: [Eyes widening, nodding head]
Dr. DMC: The blow takes its desired effect almost instantaneously: Mr. Stephens’ head rocks back, his mouth gapes open, and his lifeforce drains out, leaving behind a frozen, inanimate blob.

TS: Damn, they got Sammy.
Dr. DMC: [Staring trancelike at the frozen screen, muttering more to himself than to anyone else] Just look at that contemptible, proud, evil woman, so satisfied with the excruciating pain she has wrought…
TS: Do you think it was painful? It seemed like it happened so fast.
Dr. DMC: [Snapping out of it] Hm? Oh, yes. Well… there’s really no telling the physical sensation. But there can be no question of the end state. Hence the name “death-touch.”
TS: But one thing I don’t understand, Doc Duke. Why would Ellen DeGeneres want to kill Sammy Stephens with her death-touch?
Dr. DMC: An excellent question, Tyrone. And I can’t offer you a definitive answer. One hypothesis is that she is an extraterrestrial consummating a vendetta outstanding from a parallel dimension. Another is that she simply envies his dancing ability. Dancing is a cornerstone of the Ellen DeGeneres schtick, as I understand it, and if a guest comes on and dances better than she does it makes her look bad and, frankly, disgusting.
TS: [Nodding]
Dr. DMC: Another thing: if you watch closely you can see at approximately… here, the 31-second mark… Ms. DeGeneres evinces some dismay, cowering and uttering a terse yowl as if physically pained, as Mr. Stephens advances on her coffee table. Performing the death-touch on Mr. Stephens on national television could be Ms. DeGeneres’ way of sending a message to all those watching: thou shalt not threaten my coffee table centerpiece (which if I’m not mistaken appears to be a casserole of marshmallows, presumably for the mugs of hot cocoa no doubt served in place of water or coffee for this holiday season taping - very Ellen) with lewd bodily motions. Alternatively, she could be a witch. (The Parapsychological Association does not pursue the study of witchcraft, but I’ve conducted some independent research of my own, all of it as yet inconclusive.) To be honest, motives in this case are beyond my purview.
TS: So then what happens?
Dr. DMC: Tyrone my boy this is where it gets interesting. Over the course of my decades of study I have witnessed countless instances of etheric projection - the spirit or etheric body leaving the physical body. But never have I seen it occur so quickly following the expiration of the physical body and certainly never so… how to put this… so triumphantly.

TS: Sammy!
Dr. DMC: Weeeell, not quite Sammy. If you watch closely you can clearly see the moment of bilocation, when the etheric body and the vestigial physical body are visible simultaneously. Also note that the apparition that then rises - somewhat Phoenix-like I can’t help but remark - exhibits a markedly different pigmentation: the mist-like pallor endemic to your vast majority of discarnate entities. And finally, while I can’t account for this scientifically, at the very moment this etheric projection occurs, the music changes from the ebullient Bernard Edwards bassline-backed rhymes of the Sugarhill Gang to a more portentous and I believe, if my tin ear serves me at all well, minor-key melody.
TS: Ghost music?
Dr. DMC: Ghost music.
TS: [Shakes his head in awe.] So you’re sure. A ghost, huh?
Dr. DMC: Well take a look at this, Tyrone. The Ellen DeGeneres Show tapes at NBC Studios at 3000 W. Alameda Avenue, in Burbank, California.
TS: Wait, how do you know that?
Dr. DMC: [Completely disregarding Tyrone's question, Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. pulls out a set of blueprints from his briefcase.] These are the schematics for the structural ironwork of that NBC Studios building and they’re very, very strange indeed …
TS: Hold on, where did you get those?
Dr. DMC: [Entirely absorbed by the maze of the pages unfolded before him] … this roof cap is made of a magnesium-tungsten alloy. Cold riveted girders with cores of pure selenium. The structure is exactly like the kind of telemetry tracker that NASA uses to identify dead pulsars in deep space. The whole building is a huge super-conductive antenna that practically seems to have been designed and built expressly for the purpose of pulling in and concentrating spiritual turbulence! I’ve never seen anything like it!
TS: Amazing.
Dr. DMC: Now look at this. [Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. pulls out a device that looks like an oversized remote control and that begins beeping as Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. passes it over the television screen.]
TS: Whassat?
Dr. DMC: This, Tyrone, is a giga-meter. It’s a gauge that measures psychomagnetheric energy in GEVs - that’s giga-electron volts.
TS: Dig it.
Dr. DMC: Now, I begin to pick up a fairly strong reading as soon as Mr. Stephens appears on the set, which is very abnormal - for a living human to register at all. When the etheric projection occurs there is a predictable spike in the reading, but watch this: when the Ghost of Mr. Stephens actually begins to dance - here, at approximately the 47-second mark - we get a PME surge of incredible, even dangerous proportions. Nearly a fourfold crossrip! He buries the needle!
TS: Swanky.
Dr. DMC: Little could Ms. DeGeneres have anticipated that by administering her death-touch she would be unfettering a spirit with a dancing fever multiplied by an order of magnitude! Of course, she tries to play it off casually, rising to join her newly reanimated rival, but you can see how awkwardly she dances, unsure of what to do with her arms. And the entire time she is staring at the Ghost of Mr. Stephens almost unblinkly. Shocked into a mute quagmire as if by a giant psychomagnetheric energy brainfreeze!
TS: So what’s The Doctor Duke’s scientific conclusion?
Dr. DMC: While I can’t place total confidence behind this theory, my initial interpretation is that Sammy Stephens had an incredibly uncommonly forceful etheric body housed within him just desperate to be freed from corporeal bounds, freed to dance into eternity. To put it simply, the circumstances finally lined up for that freeing: time, place, Ms. DeGeneres. If you want to know the medical opinion of this Doctor of Parapsychology: bully for the Ghost of Sammy Stephens!
TS: And chilly for Ellen DeGeneres!
Dr. DMC: [Clasps hands together and laughs heartily, and a little maniacally.]

Epilogue:

When Tyrone Shoelaces went to bed that night, I didn’t feel any of the melancholy funk I’d felt the night before. This time I felt a different funk, a good funk. I thought about Ellen DeGeneres, the woman with the fatal touch and the inscrutable motives. I thought about Sammy, brutally murdered by a vindictive and totally out of control talk show host. I thought about Sammy’s Ghost, now free to strut and gambol about the etheric plane for all of eternity. And I thought about my new friend living down the hall, Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. I couldn’t wait to tell The Count about everything and introduce him to The Doctor.

Having achieved the closure I’d been seeking, albeit rather circuitously, I felt so good that I decided to unpack my record player and throw on one of Tyrone’s favorite cuts by the Bar-Kays. The funk gets real thick around the 3:57 mark and then those merciless boys run it back and do it again at 6:40. This one is for Big Sammy Stephens, wherever you are…