I Love a Mystery!

Subject: I Love a Mystery!
From: GUEST,Poirot fan
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 04:35 AM

Reading mystery stories has always been terrific fun for me, especially trying to solve the mystery before the police or the dectective does.

Something new has been added to my hobby with the addition of today's powerful search engines tho. It's now possible to gather so much imformation about real life mysteries, that you can find out in one night what it took teams of people years to compile. Often leads to some pretty certain conclusions about things that have baffled people for a long time.

Has anyone on this forum SOLVED any mysteries, Big, small or tiny from information they got from the computer? Or even had their OWN mysteries?

I should have said solved to YOUR satisfaction.

I got this idea from reading the theories on the Gary Condit discussion, although I don't know much about him.

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 07:12 AM

No, no-one here has

Now go away and leave us to discuss music

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: GUEST,guest 2
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 08:37 AM

Poirot fan, ignore previous guest's ignorant response- you'll no doubt get a selection of friendlier, fascinating replies from more typical 'catters

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: DonMeixner
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 11:15 AM

Mssr Poirot,

I am a confirmed fan of who dunnits. I especially like old pulp style stuff. As a kid I was hooked by S.S. Vandusen, the Thinking Machine. I like Dick Francis altho' its always the same character with a different name. The detail and research is always facinating. LOvejoy books and the tv mysteries are also a favorite of mine. Louis LaMour wrote many good westerns but a reread and you'll discover that many are finely crafted mysteries.

The one mystery I am working on is how to play the guitar. Everything else is just an interesting puzzle.

Don

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 11:36 AM

The whole business of trying to find a song and where it comes from, and what it might mean can provide us here with some fascinating mysteries.

Wild speculation pinned down by someone who chases up accounts in some long forgotten publication that is still asccessible on the net. Personal stories from people who've been to the horses mouth. Fiction can't keep up with reality sometimes.

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: Peter T.
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 12:00 PM

The Oak Island Mystery reintrigued me when we started a discussion here, and I went out and checked the various sites of the expeditions, etc. yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 12:22 PM

...and the full story of what happened at Four Mile Island may never be told...

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: khandu
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 01:36 PM

Life is a Mystery...I am working on solving it!

khandu

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 02:14 PM

Absolutely!

When I was a kid I discovered Poe's great detective Auguste Dupin, and how he would use a continuing thread of logic to come up with a conclusion. It was fanciful and certainly entertaining, but became a life long hobby for me. I enjoy it the same way others might enjoy crossword puzzles, chess problems or math calculations. Keeps the brain from atrophying!

As far as 'personal' mysteries, the first one that comes to mind was the listing of an instrument being played on a Leadbelly record. On his version of the song Ella Speed, there is an amazing sound (other than his 12 string guitar) from what they listed as a "zither". I loved it so much that I hunted down a concert zither....but simply couldn't get anything approximating "that sound". I figured I'd need to find someone really skilled on the instrument...play them the record, and see what they said. Took years, but I met a lady who played it well. She listened to the record and said "that's NO zither"!

So the mystery continued. Little did I know that my friend Andy Cohen was also trying to track down the "sound" and the player as well. Well he cracked it! The instrument was the verrry rare Dolceola...played by Los Angeles studio guy Paul Mason Howard. I wrote some e-mails from info I'd gotten from the net and managed to communicate with some musicians who'd known Howard. I can't tell you how much fun that's been!

There are tons of music mysteries, as McGrath said, and the great thing is that you don't have to be a folklorist or musicologist to solve them. You have to know how to ask questions, read between the lines, help the folks WITH information get comfortable, have an open mind, accept that the experts are occasionally wrong, and love the process!

Rick

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: GUEST,pelrad
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 02:50 PM

There are mysteries all around us, and I love connecting seemingly unrelated facts and turning them into cohesive stories. Guess I'm a born journalist.

I'm still working on one mystery; a friend of mine was moving with her husband to Hawaii over summer break (we were in college together at the time) and never did call to say goodbye. They lived in a duplex next to one of my brother's friends, who said that he heard fighting and a gunshot over there one night a few days before the couple moved. He said he saw the husband but not the wife after the incident. He didn't seem suspicious that anything had gone on, but he's not the sharpest tack in the box...I haven't managed to track down my friend to figure out whether it was just a fight or if we should be digging in the woods behind their old house.

I sincerely hope she's living it up in Hawaii.

I can't at the moment think of any I've solved, other than some mysteries like what some ruins around here used to be, etc.

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 03:01 PM

And just where DOES Cottoneyed Joe come from? And where IS Pearl Bryant's head? I wonder how many mysterious events mentioned in songs 'Catters can come up with?

ooops! I don't know if this is a PROPER challenge or not!

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 03:04 PM

The trouble with mysteries is that they all too easily turn into 'conspiracy theories' - particularly in America

At least it allows us to have a cheap laugh at how dumb and naive many US citizens are

And, yes, we do laugh

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: Peter T.
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 03:07 PM

My solution to the slayer in The Long Black Veil is that it was done by the best friend in a face mask done to look like the singer, in revenge for sleeping with his wife. The other alternative -- that the best friend was his twin brother, and the wife was just confused -- has too many holes in it. yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 03:11 PM

Shoot, "GUEST", so do we, it's a sort of "National Amusement". You didn't think we were SERIOUS did you?

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 03:14 PM

And the great thing with the net is when Rick mentions "the verrry rare Dolceola", which I've never ever heard of - I can promptly the name into a search engine and get a site that tells me all about the instrument, with a picture of one.

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: Peter T.
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 03:20 PM

Speaking of serious, I read today an article with quotes about the proposal to change North Dakota to Dakota. The best quote, from somebody in Comedy Central, was that the idea was to change the image of the state from "a cold treeless prairie to a cold treeless prairie with the name of a stripper". (I laughed). yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 03:22 PM

I like Shelock Holmes.

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: Amergin
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 03:33 PM

Sure...I solve mysteries every day....like where did I put my pills....or where did I put my car keys...trash the house and find them in my pocket....

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 07:00 PM

Two of the best musical mysteries that I followed closely on Mudcat were the search for the real origins of Huddie ledbetter's "Irene Goodnite" and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine"...plus an amazing thread that culminated in some folks (including me) trying to contact Peter o'toole. Two years after it appeared, I discovered (while researching my friend the late Al Cromwell) that he had been a Toronto FRIEND of O'Toole's.

From a non-musical perspective, I've had HUGE entertainment from reading the great amount of info on the web about "whether Shakspear, wrote Shakespeare" or not". I'd always thought that was one of those silly arguements put forth by fans of Bacon (the guy not the breakfast) or De Vere, and wouldn't hold water. Not so. The net allows me to see the methods that both sides use to argue their points, and it becomes painfully obvious that one side attacks the motives and qualifications of the other side EVERYTIME they can't refute a known fact.

In the real world you'd have to wait years for the various books to be published, or have to go thousands of miles to sit in on a debate that might be attended by a mere thirty or so interested people. On the net, you just throw the arguements up against each other and see who's made their point most succinctly.

Mysteries are great fun, especially when you don't care which side wins.

Rick

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: Peter T.
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 07:26 PM

This month's BBC History magazine has an excerpt from yet another book on Who Killed Kit Marlowe? This time it is the entire Privy Council. No new evidence, and I don't think much of this latest theory, but the Marlowe killing remains very, very strange. This is one of those mysteries that really does raise the eyebrows when you look at the sequence of events, who was involved, etc.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: I Love a Mystery!
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Aug 01 - 08:23 AM

It should be noted that the fecund imagination of Mudcat's own Lonesome EJ has spawned some very entertaining threads based on his hard-boiled detective character, Blake Madison. Do a forum search on Lonesome EJ, or Blake Madison ... and enjoy! (and the one thread remains unresolved as to who killed "Three Hands" Washington ... test your skill! LEJ probably wouldn't mind.)