Hello Everyone! As a long-time investigator of paranormal phenomena now working on my third book on the subject*, I was not surprised to get a call from NobleWorks about a month ago. I had earlier submitted an idea for a series of paranormal greeting cards that would open up an entirely untapped market for greeting card companies: the dead, undead, and supernatural. I sent them prototypes and everything.
I was surprised, however, when it turned out they wanted me to do a blog series on the paranormal. I guess paranormal investigation really has hit the mainstream! Well, the economy is so bad that people can’t afford to get haunted or possessed as often as they used to, so I took the gig. Join me each month as I investigate visions, apparitions, and the just plain ludicrous in NobleWorks’ new series, Holy Ghost Hunters.
My first investigation led me to Lulu LeBlanc, 29, of Brownsville, Texas who claims that the Virgin Mary appeared to her on a Pop Tart. A Pop Tart! Of course! It makes perfect sense that if there is a god, she’d provide proof of her existence through a sugary, cavity inducing breakfast product in the fattest county in the world. Anyway, having already investigated claims of Christ on a cracker and Christ on a biscuit, I was eager to delve into a new area of parochial paranormal presence on foodstuffs with a shout out to sacred women! Go Mary!
LeBlanc who recently lost her graveyard shift at the local cannery in a freak accident involving a rusty lid, a nasty cut, and no health insurance, believes that the image is a message from God. With no income, the bills have piled up. LeBlanc’s double-wide is in foreclosure, the electricity was turned off days ago, and there has been no food on the table; except for the Pop Tart that holds the place of honor on a lazy susan.
“If it weren’t for onion grass and dandelion weeds, me and my kids wouldn’t have nothing to eat,” said LeBlanc.
“I thought finding the box of Pop Tarts behind the couch were a miracle. There was only one but we were gonna split it between the six of us,” she said, casting a glance through the kitchen window toward the dirt road where her five children were mixing up mud pies and collecting five dollars from inquisitive neighbors that have lined up three people deep around the trailer park eager for a look at their own local miracle.
“But when I took it off the grill we been using since they cut our power,” she continued, “I saw the face of the Virgin Mary and I knew that everything was going to be all right. It reassured me that God is watching out for us. It gives us hope.”
Since Lulu knew that I was investigating her claim that God himself had toasted an image of the Virgin Mary onto her Pop Tart, she let me look at it for half price. The first thing a professional looks for on a toasted deity is what we Holy Ghost Hunters call Consistency: it has to make sense. God would not, for instance, toast Jesus’ image onto matzo. In this case, as you can see from the image, the Pop Tart had visible holes in it. It was holy. But it takes more than oh-so-clever plays on words to pass the Consistency test. I asked Lulu what kind of Pop Tart it was. “Cherry,” she said. Bingo! If Lulu was trying to fake a pious Pop Tart, she had done her homework!
Next one looks for what we professional Holy Ghost Hunters call Divine Artistry. When God toasts an image onto something, it looks like God drew it. Years of looking at mysteriously appearing iconic imagery has taught me that God has his own distinctive drawing style and it is very hard for even the finest mortal artist to mimic. God, you see, is not a very good artist. Frankly, he’s positively awful. Looking at the Pop Tart image, it’s pretty bad: fuzzy, poorly shaded, cartoonish. I mean, the face could be a dude’s face. And are her hands clasped in prayer at the bottom or is that holy cleavage? Yes, this was just dreadful enough to have been drawn by the one, true, astigmatic God of all.
There are other tests, but I won’t bore you with all the technical details. My final verdict on the Virgin Mary Pop Tart? It is 100% genuine. And Lulu will be auctioning it on eBay in the coming weeks with bidding starting at a mere $5,000, so start saving your pennies. Lulu has generously agreed to donate 10% of the final eBay bid to my paranormal investigation fund, so we will all benefit if the 100% authentic Virgin Mary Pop Tart goes for a small fortune. In the meantime, I’ll see you next month. Gesundheit.
*As this goes to press, I am almost finished reading that third book.
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