Well, things just got a lot weirder.
This is an update to last week's post, which you should read here before you go any further. Last week I posted about my experiences with the Mandela Effect/false memory phenomenon, specifically in reference to the apparently obscure horror author Rex Garrote, who may or may not exist. I spoke with many of you about it on social media.
Some people thought I was trolling, for obvious reasons - what's another harmless lie to a guy who makes stuff up on a daily basis? Others seemed to remember Garrote, having read one of his books, heard about his death, or met him in person at a horror convention.
I was content to leave it at that until Saturday night, when out of the blue I got a message on the post asking if they could contact me personally to talk about it. Which is especially odd, because no one comments on my blog posts - even the "indie advice" article that seems to be pretty popular. The commenter (who said they "got literal chills" while reading the post) did not want to talk in a "public forum," which I thought was weird but fine. I told them to message me on my FB author page. The next morning I received this message, containing these photos:
So there it is! The book I've been looking for since the early 2000s. Rex Fucking Garrote! Apparently this woman's father passed away recently, and they were going through his stuff to decide what to keep, what to throw away and what to give to charity. Her father was a "lifelong horror fan," and a voracious reader. As a child, she was always fascinated by this book. Apparently the house reminded her of a house she thought she knew.
You may note, as I did, that the cover appears to have the crease in the exact same place as the image from his Wikipedia page, which leads me to believe the person who made the page might also be the person who sent me these images. (See below.)
What's also interesting to note is that the profile pic of the woman I spoke to appears to be the "Masked Magician," Val Valentino, who between 1997 and 1999 did four Fox Network TV specials revealing some of magic's most famous tricks.
So am I being "punked"? Would someone actually go to the trouble to create a fake FB profile, a fake wiki page and an actual fake book just to mess with me? Is this all an elaborate prank? And if so, how is it possible this person knew what a book from my childhood looked like if that book never truly existed?
There has to be something much deeper to all of this. One commenter mentioned a "paranoid" theory that "the Mandela Effect is evidence of manipulation of our timeline by malevolent forces." That's a bit over the top, as far as I'm concerned. I'd be more likely to believe in a government coverup or something like that - although I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to cover up the existence of a midlist horror author from the '80s.
Of course there's another possibilty: that maybe Rex Garrote is a discarded pen name that some ridiculously famous writer has not-so-successfully buried - like George Stark from Stephen King's The Dark Half. And maybe we're all "fool's stuffing" for having believed it.
Whatever the truth is, I'll find out soon enough. She's promised to send the book to me if I cover the cost, so hopefully I'll have it in my hands in a couple of weeks or so! I've gotta say, I'll be pretty excited to finally get my hands on it.
Until then, if anybody has any further info on the book or Garrote himself, I would very much appreciate you sharing it!
Update: a major revelation in the Rex Garrote mystery! Mystery solved? You decide!
