Pop Culture

Mothman’s “Cyrus Bills” Dies

Get me Cyrus Bills at the Post. The Mothman Prophecies, 2002 “Cyrus Bills” was a character, a Washington Post reporter, in the movie The Mothman Prophecies, played by Bob Tracey of Carnegie, Pennsylvania. Tracey died on January 26, 2007, exactly five years to the same weekend that The Mothman Prophecies opened in theaters across the United States. Bob Tracey, a former disc jockey, passed away from complications of pneumonia, said his wife, Marjorie Michel. Tracey was born Robert Charles Michel in Rutherford, New Jersey, in 1923. Still involved in local broadcasting and theater, Tracey had appeared in several films, including [...]

American Dime Museum Closes – Part I

We’re losing another great piece of Baltimore personality. It was esoteric and great and hilarious and very fitting for this city. Maybe it was just too good to be accepted by enough people. – John Waters, Baltimore filmmaker and director of Pink Flamingos Photo credit: Barbara Matteson. A tradition eight years in the making based on wonders, gaffs, and sideshow fakery going back hundreds of years is closing. The American Dime Museum first opened in Baltimore in 1999, but has gone the way of many such sites. The cost of keeping it open has become too much. It is no [...]

FeeJee Mermaids & Other Gaffs

The easiest pseudocryptozoological exhibition items to have, of course, are often the gaffs and hoaxes. Among those in most cabinets of curiosities are the Feejee mermaids and the furred trouts, both taxidermy fakes. I have my share. I use them to let people know these objects are often shown as “almost real” specimens. Most honest sideshow owners displaying them often merely only ask “What is It?” or “Is it Real?” But slowly the drift has been, perhaps due to eBay, for people to present these items as cryptozoological, from “unknown animals.” For cryptozoologists, we need to be aware of this [...]