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…

Yep, no fooling. Beset by a melancholy funk following my bout of Sammy Stephens-induced introspection (The Count offered comfort in the form of an old painting from his trunk, but it was small solace in my current state; I told him I thought it was a little too “Precious Moments,” which I now regret), The ‘Laces sought closure by rewatching his Sammy Stephens Dance-Jam tape a few more times (I acknowledge the poor quality, the VHS I recorded it on is from the 1970s and it seems that the oriented polyester film that serves as the substrate or backing supporting the tape’s magnetic layer has suffered some distortion over the years. Or it could be that the polyester polyurethane-based polymer in the tape binder has a case of sticky shed syndrome. Tyrone once heard that baking the tape in an oven at low temperature might cure such a condition, but he can’t bring himself to do it cuz he just knows he’d fall asleep and end up frying his favorite old movies like some crumbed catfish. Especially with the old-fashioned oven we’re working with in the Mansion). Now, tape-quality considerations noted, the ‘Laces could’ve sworn he saw a funny thing the 5th or 6th time he watched the tape over. Okay, I’m gonna come right out and tell you: Tyrone Shoelaces saw a ghost.

I know, The ‘Laces didn’t believe it either at first. But just as I was staggering down the hallway rubbing ma’ eyeballs, I near tripped over a furry little fellow scurrying past me. An intruder? No, he hastened to inform me, he was in fact a fellow resident of Microwave Mansion. The next particular imparted was his name: Dr. Duke McBaron. And following that, his vocation: parapsychologist.

To be continued…

Tyrone Shoelaces here. So it’s Tyrone Shoelaces’ first night in the Mansion and he goes up to his room to put his clean jersey sheets on his bed only to find laying on his floor a dusty old Gideon’s Bible. Normally the ‘Laces would have dismissed it as a curio but he learned recently that the Bible is the most popular book in America. 2,513 U.S. adults can’t be wrong, so the ‘Laces saddles up and starts reading about Joseph, since he’s the one Bible Joe who seemed to have a style the ‘Laces could dig.

Joseph went to prison but he was smooth enough to make good with the warden, which no doubt helped in his eventual escape. Just like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption. Man, Tyrone Shoelaces loves that movie.

Sammy Stephens sho’ nuff got the shaft in the credits though, maybe because of the Red Scare. Shit, House Un-American Activities Committee, Tyrone Shoelaces would like to see you step under THIS

and we’ll see who’s finished. But Shoelaces feels conflicted about Sammy Stephens. He loves him, but he can’t figure out how much of Sammy he really sees. Sammy is a character to Tyrone. Would you want to be loved as a mere character to someone else? Is that better than never being loved at all? This is why Tyrone Shoelaces can’t sleep at night. This Gideon’s Bible has an apparatus suggesting Bible verses which may be of assistance in various sorts of trouble.