ANTIQUE CEILING CANOPY

One cold foggy Sunday night in the autumn of 1871, 68-year-old Lionel Harland, a respected Rodney Street doctor, left his surgery and walked up Liverpool's Maryland Street, when he heard footsteps approaching. The shadowy figure of a tall wiry man wearing a top hat and a flowing cape was emerging from the swirling fog, a hundred yards ahead.

Dr Harland hesitated at the corner of Maryland and Rodney Street and felt a shiver run up his spine, even though he wore a heavy fur coat on this chilly September night.

The silhouette advanced towards the doctor with an almost military gait, and as it came within range of the flickering yellow flame of a lamppost, the elderly doctor saw to his horror that the approaching figure was the very same one he had encountered twenty years before.

It was not a living person at all, but the ghostly shade of a dead man - a dead man the doctor had known personally many years ago. It was the terrifying apparition of James McKenzie, an evil and wicked man who gambled with the Devil and lost his soul as a result, forever condemned to walk the earth without rest until Judgement Day.

Before the doctor could cross the cobbled road to escape the terrifying ghost, the apparition let out a spiteful laugh and sneeringly said: "Ha! Hospital Sunday!" The spectre was referring to a charity collection the doctor held on Sundays to raise funds for poor people needing hospital treatment.

Halfway across the road, Dr Harland was brave enough to take a single glance at the cursed phantom, and he almost fainted with fear. McKenzie's face looked as if it was lit up by a red flame, and his eyes were ink-black and lifeless. As the doctor shivered, the figure in black walked straight through the wall of the cemetery.

The trembling doctor reached the house of his friend Daniel Jackson in Blackburne Place, and after giving a garbled account of his meeting with McKenzie's ghost, he clutched his heart and collapsed onto the hearth rug.

Mr Jackson and a servant managed to revive the doctor and gave him a shot of brandy. Dr Harland nodded, then said: "Mr Brocklebank; tell him about McKenzie. He knows the story." Moments later, the surgeon quietly died in the fireside armchair.

The only Brocklebank Daniel Jackson knew of was the wealthy philanthropist and ship-owner Ralph Brocklebank, so after his friend's funeral, he forwarded a letter to the local tycoon about the strange story of Dr Harland, but did not expect a reply. He certainly did not expect a personal visit from the affluent Mr Brocklebank in response to his correspondence.

The 70-year-old millionaire paid his unexpected visit to Mr Jackson's house shortly before 11 pm. He alighted from a hansom cab in an anonymous black Ulster coat with a black felt fedora pulled over his eyes.

Brocklebank was led to the drawing room by a servant who he rudely dismissed with a wave of the hand. Daniel Jackson offered his illustrious guest a finely-cut tumbler of Hoagland's eight-year Scotch Whisky, rumoured to be Brocklebank's favourite tipple, but the mogul shook his head and in a cavalier manner he told his host to go over the story he'd related in the letter.

Mr Jackson gave his account of Dr Harland's final moments, and Brocklebank became very uneasy. He sat on the edge of the fireside armchair, jabbing the glowing coals of the fire with a poker with a tense expression.

After he had listened to Mr Jackson, he told a very strange story indeed which threw some light on the McKenzie ghost. It was a tale of greed, murder and the supernatural. Brocklebank seemed to see the events he described in the flames of the grate ashe spoke.

He said, "I remember James McKenzie. He was one of those people who are born old and crooked. Even then he was in his fifties. I was 25-years-old when I first met him, and your deceased friend was 23 and fresh out of medical school.

"McKenzie made and lost fortunes most men can only dream of. He backed the early railways and financed George Stephenson's locomotive machines. He was seen as pillar of the community and a backer of commerce and industry; but there was another unsavoury side to the man few people were aware of. He was a compulsive gambler and an ardent atheist.

"Someone told me that he put his family Bible on the fire after his sweetheart died from a fever. They say he hated God because of her death. And there were strange rumours about the man."

In 1826, eleven bodies were found in barrels in the cargo hold of a ship at Liverpool Docks. The police traced the barrels to a house at Number 8 Hope Street. That house was being looked after by a James MacGowan, who was an associate of James
McKenzie.

Anyway, the police arrested Mr MacGowan after they found 22 corpses of men women and children that had been dug up from the local cemetery. Mr MacGowan refused to name names, but everyone suspected Mr Mackenzie of being the
instigator.

There were whispers that he had turned Number 8

[oh, this is me]-i just got my septum done on tuesday<3

:)


so today was stress-packed. i booked a shoot with a band known as Millionaires. they're playing a show in fresno @ the exit. i called melissa twice today, and no answer, no call back. there's really nothing i can do about this. i guess the shoot is canceled. ughh. oh well. there will be other chances.
photography gets so irritating after doing it for so long. people take advantage of me, and talk shit....and it all really makes me want to give up.

sometimes i do. but i KNOW that this is exactly what i'm going to do for the rest of my life....

SO BRING IT.

i'm super stressed.
my friends are usually pretty good at keeping me occupied. but today, nothing helped.

my mind is going like 100mph.

:(