Lincoln's Ghost

It's snowing here in the mountains of Virginia, and tonight feels like the perfect time for a ghost story.  So bundle up, scoot closer to the fire, and let's celebrate President's Day the spooky way.

It is sometimes said that the most haunted home in America is the White House.  Countless stories of spirits and presences have been documented.  Presidents, first ladies, heads of state, and the staff have heard footsteps, disembodied voices, and mysterious creaks.  Occasionally, full-body apparitions have appeared only to fade when the witness ran screaming or fainted dead away.

Of course, there is one spirit that tops the list, being seen so frequently that it's earned the title of "The White House Ghost": the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.

The first person to see Lincoln's ghost was Grace Coolidge, who lived in the White house as first lady between 1923 and 1929.  One day, she reported seeing an apparition of in the Yellow Oval Room.  He stood with his back to her by the window, looking out over the Potomac.

In 1942, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands heard footsteps in the hall outside her bedroom door.  As it was midnight, she was surprised when a knock came.  She answered it.  On the other side of the door stood Lincoln, in frock coat and top hat.  Wilhelmina fainted dead away.

However, that was not the only bedroom to be visited.  Many anonymous eyewitnesses reported hearing footsteps inside and outside the Lincoln bedroom at night.  Sometimes a knock would come at the door to the bedroom, and when answered by the occupant, there would be only empty air.  Undoubtedly, that room where Lincoln himself spent countless sleepless nights is the most haunted.

Plenty have seen him lying in repose on the bed.  Others have seen him going about his everyday business.  Famously, Mary Eben, secretary to Eleanor Roosevelt, looked into the room one day.  At the end of the bed, she saw the long-limbed figure of Lincoln sitting. pulling on his boots.  Immediately, she ran from the room "terribly wrought up".  Other accounts say she was screaming.

Others reacted to the ghost of Lincoln more stoically.  Winston Churchill disliked staying in the Lincoln bedroom.  But, despite his unease, there he slept during a visit in the '40s.  He was unwinding in the bathtub after a long day, smoking his cigar, and drinking scotch.  Even though I can't imagine why you would leave such bliss, he eventually rose from the bath and, wearing nothing but his cigar, walked into the bedchamber.  He was shocked to see Lincoln standing by the fireplace, leaning on the mantle.  According to the story Churchill told, the British leader then said "Good evening, Mr. President.  You seem to have me at a disadvantage!"  Lincoln smiled softly and disappeared.

However frightening these stories of Lincoln, they don't compare to the other ghost that haunts the White House.  At age 11, Willie Lincoln died of illness- most likely typhoid fever.  The death nearly drove his mother Mary Todd to insanity, and his father into a deep depression.

Willie's ghost was seen as early as the 1870s during the Grant administration, but has haunted the House for many years since.  In the 1960s, LBJ's daughter, Lynda Bird Johnson Robb saw Willie's ghost.  She was staying in the room he'd died in.  She said she talked to him.

Whether these ghosts are merely hallucinations and the settling of a centuries-old house, we may never know.  But one thing is for certain, something haunts the greatest house in the land, even if it's just memories.

-Joanna

My Bloody Valentine - Movie Review

My Bloody Valentine
1981
Directed by George Mihalka
Spoiler Free!

Happy Valentine's Day!  Whether you're single or attached, I hope you're spending today anywhere other than a sad little mining town in Canada.  My Bloody Valentine takes place in just such a backwater, haunted by the specter of its dark past.

The story goes: 20 years ago, while the townspeople twisted away at the Valentine's Day Dance, a terrible mine accident trapped 5 men underground.  After a rescue effort that took several weeks, they pulled one survivor from the dark: Harry Warden.  Having resorted to cannibalism, Warden was now deeply insane.  A year quietly passed.  Then, on the next Valentine's Day, Harry Warden returned to murder the two supervisors responsible for the accident with a pick ax.  He left their hearts in heart-shaped chocolate boxes with notes warning the town never to have a Valentine's Day Dance again!

For 20 years, the warning had been heeded.  That is, until now.  The dance is back on, and it seems Harry has returned.  Hearts and bodies pop up everywhere as the sheriff and mayor deal with the crisis.  A group of young people (the men work in the mine, the women.... put up Valentine's Day decorations) are insistent that the Valentine's Day Dance go ahead.  When the sheriff cancels it, they plan to break into the rec-area of the mine and hold it anyways.

By the end, the body count is growing, and the remaining characters are left to race through the mines, running from the gas-masked madman.

With a title like My Bloody Valentine, one would expect this to be a slasher schlock-fest complete with terrible music, college-girls in bras, and plenty of gratuitous violence.  I'm not gonna say My Bloody Valentine LACKS those things, but it does manage to conduct itself without ever falling deep into the pit of Bad Movie-dom.

If you go into My Bloody Valentine expecting art, you will be disappointed.  If you go in expecting a fun horror movie, you will be rewarded with chocolate.

Or organ meats... whichever.

The pacing is perfect.  Dread is accomplished quickly and succinctly, particularly in the first-person stalking scenes.  Storytelling is a thing this movie does at all, which in turn means that we get definition on the many characters.  And it does so without forcing us to watch the actors exchange terrible, blunt, tired lines of dialogue about their backstories that are so bleakly generic that they might as well have been making seal-sounds (or perhaps my angst about the remake is bleeding in here- Orp, orp,orp!).

Speaking of characters, from the sheriff to the twenty-somethings, the players are distinct enough to keep straight, and some are even lovable.  For example, Hollis, a bearlike, mustached guy who is actually responsible, yet also a pretty cool dude in a committed, caring relationship with his lady.  Of course, there's plenty of sexism and a love triangle, but near the end these problems begin to shift in subtle ways.  The two guys fighting over a girl completely put aside their differences to make sure everyone gets out of the mine alive.  Relationships are sometimes portrayed as... actual relationships that include things other than banging.  The authority figures do things authority figures would, which includes not telling the youngsters jackshit.  Also, there's a deeply sad moment involving the sheriff and a box of chocolates that hints at how the adults are also leading their own complicated and emotional lives.

Then, we get to my favorite part: the makeup and practical effects.  My Bloody Valentine comes off as a bit coy when it comes to gore.  This may have been because the MPAA cut 9 minutes of "gore" from the feature before its release.  But whatever the cause, the effect is that we don't have to spend long stretches of time staring as a person gurgles.  In fact, we frequently only get glimpses of the kills, reminiscent of the man who got his eyes pecked out by finches in The Birds (only not quite as classy).  However, when we do get a look at the gore, it's very well-done.  There's no "Here, let me wet toilet-paper and stick it to your face, then over-use my stippling sponge- HOLD STILL" in this movie.  It's as if the make-up department actually bothered to look up the difference between someone who gets third degree burns from boiling water, and someone who gets burns from being left in an industrial dryer overnight.

Of course, there's plenty about My Bloody Valentine that evokes giggles rather than gasps.  The villain is distinctly Darth Vader-y.  The opening scene is basically all you ever need to know about a slasher movie ever- it's so cliche that it's like a warm hug from a teddy-bear.  The twist-ending is visible from a mile away, and the plot plays it by the book.

But what made me enjoy My Bloody Valentine is how right it gets it.  All the genetic markers for slasher movies are here, and done very well.  In my opinion, the thing that makes a good slasher movie is not how scary it is, but rather the chord it strikes.  Slasher-movies ought to be a thrilling admixture of schadenfruede, creepiness. laughs, and investment in the characters.  They're the campfire stories about hooks on cardoors.  Their purpose is to compel teenagers to clutch each other, then chuckle awkwardly, not stay with those teens until 3 o'clock staring at the ceiling.  Thus, with this being my personal rubric for slasher-flicks, I think My Bloody Valentine is a good one.  Perhaps not the greatest of all time, but a solid entry.

-Joanna

Nurse with Wound: Homotopy to Marie

As I've stuck my nose into the various musical backwaters of the internet, I sometimes come across music that I don't necessarily like, but can appreciate.  This generally happens when I get sucked into a labyrinth of noise music (which sounds exactly like it... sounds).  This is also what happened to me with Nurse with Wound, the recording name of Steven Stapleton.  I gave the first album, Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella, a listen when somebody on an online forum recommended it as good listens similar to Throbbing Gristle (a group I do enjoy- Slugbait ftw!).

Unfortunately, if you weren't clued in by the strange and slightly artsy/pretentious album title, Nurse with Wound is an avant-garde, Dadaist kind of production.  He focuses heavily on improvisation, eclectic instruments, and tape-looping samples to create horrifying and insane soundscapes.  Nurse with Wound isn't so much music to nod to, as it's music to listen to while scowling and looking puzzled.

Caveat:  I haven't listened to everything Nurse with Wound has produced.  Mind you, Stapleton is remarkably prolific, having released 41 albums between 1979 and 2013- and that's not counting his collaborative works.  So, I'm sure that Nurse with Wound's sound evolves over time, but I can't speak to that.  Right now, I'm here to review an album I did rather enjoy, even if I don't look forward to listening to it again.

Homotopy to Marie was released in 1982, and is the first album that Stapleton considers to be a "genuine" Nurse with Wound album.  It features tracks that are a bit more structured and polished, as opposed to the indulgently improvised earlier albums.

The first track, I Cannot Feel You as the Dogs are Laughing and I Am Blind, is pretty spooky.  It starts with three minutes of an indiscernible sound that could be a shovel digging into gravel, or it might be guns being thrown into a pile on the ground.  It escalates until abruptly being replaced by near-silent whispers, groans, and dripping noises.  Be warned, if you're listening on headphones, resist the temptation to turn it up or at 5:20 your eardrums will EXPLODE and you might poop your pants.  After the extremely loud noises, the murmuring in the background lifts and sounds an awful lot like a dungeon full of tortured people.  More screaming later ensues, so be on your toes.

Track 2, Homotopy to Marie (after which the album is named), is my favorite.  I sort of grok its point and its feel better than the rest.  Most of it is work with cymbals and resonances, occasionally punctuated with odd samples of a sophisticated woman proclaiming "Don't be so naive, darling!" and a little girl saying real spooky stuff.  There's some white noise layered in later, so if that bugs you, steel yourself.  It sounds like the inside of a madman's mind.

On the CD release, they included Astral Dustbin Dirge as the third track.  This is another twelve minutes of extremely quiet noises interrupted by loud, disturbing noises.  Female gasps, knockings, clatterings, and tappings created the feeling that I'm hiding just outside a serial killer's shack, too scared to run, while he drags a kicking woman inside and ....does things....

The Schmurz (Unsullied by Suckling) begins with three minutes of echoing, barking military voices.  Then lots of static and noise followed by creaky-creaks and women talking, then arguing, in Spanish.  This one, in particular, reminded me of why I avoid noise music.  It's full of feedback screams and hisses.  It gets surreal and funny when a sassy record begins playing near the end.

The last track, The Tumultuous Upsurge (Of Lasting Hatred), is a tiny little blip of distorted laughing, a la old-timey clown dolls.  Only a minute and a half long, it feels suspicious after listening to the rest of the album.

So why is all this long, terrifying, obtuse music worth listening to?  Why do I appreciate it?  Well, music is a very emotional medium, and horror is an emotional genre.  Even if this stuff isn't very fun, it provides a context for judging other spoopy music, say, in horror movies.  Listening to Nurse with Wound is like peeking at a wide and bizarre palette of disturbing textures and images.  The sounds in these albums are mysterious, bleak, shocking, or unexpected.  They suggest feelings or pictures that expand the context of horror in strange, if taxing, ways.

In short, even if the things Nurse with Wound evokes are unpleasant, they're always interesting.

-Joanna

Presumed Dead - Maria de Jesus Arroyo

It is a deep-seated fear of many to be buried alive or left for dead.  It is the driver of many an urban legend where one is presumed to be dead, placed in the morgue, and is later found out to have been alive.  One would think with the advances in today's medicine, the possiblity of mistaking a human for dead and leaving them in the morgue would be impossible, right?  Right?  Surely a highly-trained medical staff couldn't make this type of mistake.

Incorrect.

 

On July 26th, 2010, Maria de Jesus Arroyo was rushed into a Los Angeles hospital, a victim of cardiac arrest.  Doctors assessed the situation, noted that Arroyo was 80 years old, and essentially must've thought, "She's old.  Her heart gave out.  Pronounce it and take her the morgue."  It was found later that the hospital had inconsistent records of Arroyo's EKG, which would have determined if her heart was still beating at the time.  When the time came for the funeral home employees to prepare Arroyo's body for her funeral service, her body was found face down with cuts, scratches, and bruises all over as well as a broken nose.  Arroyo's injuries were so severe, they could not even be covered properly with funeral makeup.  Her family was instantly suspicious and contacted the hospital staff as well as hired an attorney to sue for mishandling of her body.

Turns out, when Arroyo arrived at the hospital, she was not dead but merely unconscious.  The cuts and bruises on her body were a result of Arroyo's frail and confused 80 year old body awakening inside a refrigeration chamber and trying desperately to free herself with as much stamina as she could muster.  Eventually, Arroyo's body gave out, resulting in her death due to hypothermia and asphyxiation.  The lawsuit of mishandling was immediately changed to, in not so many words, mistakenly declaring dead and 'freezing alive.'  Unfortunately, 17 months had passed from Arroyo's death to the time the trial finally took place and the one year statute of limitations had expired, leaving the trial judge to dismiss the family's lawsuit.  Thankfully, as late as April of 2014, nearly four years after Arroyo's death, the judge's decision was overturned and Arroyo's family was able to pursue further action against the hospital.

I once read someone describe hell as knowing you are dead and still being able to experience all five senses but being eternally locked inside of the darkness of your own mind, unable to move, unable to breathe, scream, or respond to anything.  You can see only shades of darkness but hear everything.  You can taste, smell, and feel, but not move the tiniest of muscles.  One can only imagine Mrs. Arroyo's final moments were somewhat of a hell before ascending to heaven, locked in a cold dark chamber, confused, disoriented, and ultimately, hopeless.  May she rest in peace.

Truly depressing, truly nightmare fuel.

-Amanda

White - Movie Review

White
Released 2011
Directed by Gok Kim, Sun Kim

FULL DISCLOSURE:  I love Asian Horror.  I love it so hard.  I prefer how these movies actually spend time characterizing their characters.  I like the plot structures.  I love the aesthetic and how they use horror to explore other, deeper topics.  As a result, I may be more charitable to this movie than I usually would be, simply because it suits my tastes.

White tells the story of a rising K-Pop girl group, "The Pink Dolls", and the vengeful ghost that undoes them all.  A pretty standard "Angry Ghost" plot.  At the beginning, The Pink Dolls are sucking.  They get booted off talent shows and are about to hit rock bottom.  Their manager (using the magic money of their magical super-rich sponsor) moves them into a posh new studio complex, where they rehearse, record, co-habitate, and snipe at one another.  First warning shot is fired:  manager got the studio on the cheap because there was a devastating fire in the building 15 years earlier.  People died.  *spooooooopy*

The main character Eun Joo (played subtly and endearingly by Eun-Jeong Ham) is the eldest of the group, and is therefore their dubious leader.  The other three girls (all much younger and more ambitious) disrespect her frequently, and are downright bitchy to her in one particularly revealing scene.  Eun Joo is lovable, though.  She's hard-working and somewhat humble, but not a wimp.  She competently leads the girls, despite all their toxicity.

As Eun-Joo is cleaning the mirrors in the new dance studio (she wants to help out with the move-in), she finds a secret panel containing a stash of VHS tapes.

Now, I think most of us have seen enough horror movies to know that if a hole in a wall opens up and you find a stack of grimy VHS tapes, YOU LEAVE THAT SHIT ALONE.  Don't play the tape.  Don't even look at them for too long.  Just poke them back into the hole with a stick and call the cops.  But, of course, none of us would actually do that because we're too damn curious.

One of the tapes is labelled 'White', and when Eun-Joo pops it into her VCR, it plays a distorted, warped music video by the girl group who previously owned the studio.  Lacking a hit single, she shows the song/tape to her boss, they remix it, and off they go!  One costume revamp, choreography, and sexy attitude-adjustment later, and The Pink Dolls are taking off in the K-Pop charts!

Of course, no success goes unpunished in a horror movie, and soon the girls start falling prey to sinister influences.  Their manager insists that one of them needs to be the 'lead' of the song, singing most of the lyrics and taking center stage.  You know, the Beyonce of the group.  This is where everything goes downhill for The Pink Dolls.  One by one, the other girls go slowly mad and are grievously injured when they are promoted to be 'lead'.  Eventually Eun-Joo, with the help of her bff, Soon Ye, and an awesome audio engineer, begin to unravel the mystery of the killer ghost.

Now, without talking too much about the second half of the movie, I feel the need to sell you on why you should watch White.

Reason #1:  Outstanding use of creep.

This movie does one of my favorite things:  It has entire creepy scenes that are soundless.  No forbodeing music, no puckish background violins plucking out the X-Files pizzicato, nothing but an actress looking confused or terrified.  It's so lovely.  It sometimes includes small, shrill, nerve-grating sounds to build the tension, but even then, those noises exist for a practical reason in this movie.  The waves of dread that some of the scenes in White produce are just delicious.

Reason #2:  Jump-scares out the wazoo (if you're into that sort of thing).

Now, I really don't care for jump-scares.  I just don't find them compelling.  This being said, my opinion of  White suffered due to the frequency of these jump-scares.  I LOVED the creep, but then when the movie got around to making good on all that pent-up dread, it just blew it.  The gore was basic and uninspired, and somewhat of a letdown after the masterful execution of the build-up.  Sometimes the "injuries" of the girls was out and out ridiculous; almost Final Destination-esque.  Mind you, they don't completely ruin the movie, they just knock it down a peg from being the best.

This is just my opinion, though.  So why is this reason #2 for why you should watch this movie?  Because I know lots of other people LOVE LOVE LOVE jump-scares.  And let me tell you, this movie is full of them.  It will make you jerk so hard, you'll break furniture and scare your cats.  If the Bongcheong Dong Ghost scared you, get ready for that crap again, but with bells on.  Korea is nuts.

Reason #3:  It's full of amazing female characters.

Are you sick of every woman in a horror movie being a useless chunk of eye-candy?  Are you sick of watching women helplessly flail at an easily-solved situation?  Are you sick of bad acting?  Do you also secretly love American Idol?

Well, if you watched The Descent and disliked how muddy and brutal it was, but still long for a horror movie that satisfies, then White is the movie for you! It's packed with intriguing female characters, from the manager to the ghost, everyone is different and interesting.  Even when the characters are being horrible and shallow, it's extremely well-acted.  There are horrible, shallow women in the world, and I feel that White portrays them elegantly.  When somebody goes insane, it feels legitimately overwhelming, because you aren't just watching a Barbie-doll thrash around on the floor.

Further, I feel like the heart of White isn't so much about scary ghosts, but rather the complex relationships that tie women together.  Body-image, pride, the expectation to be kind, the expectation to be bitchy, the requirement to work together in an industry that is cruel and shallow, and the desire for actual friendship are just a few of the pressures clawing at these women.  Then, they have to perform sexual favors to get funding and are criticized and managed and used as if they are, truly, dolls.  The fact that there's also a vengeful ghost driving them to their deaths begins to seem like the least of their problems.  Or rather, it's an entertaining tool for getting at these harsh interpersonal subtexts. 

Reason #4: Compelling use of media.

White skips between scratchy VHS, low-res reality tv, glossy music video, thrashing live-concert footage, and conventional horror aesthetics as easily as a bird flying through clouds.  The transition between these styles is always seamless, because it's always called for by the story.  And the overall blending of these formats makes it ever more convincing that the evil imprint of a vengeful ghost could slip out into the real world.  Combine this with the eerieness of reversed audio recordings and mysterious internet activity, and you've got a multimedia cornucopia of spookiness.

In conclusion, I recommend White.  It's your comfy old Asian-ghost-with-a-grudge story, but with a slick Korean Idol update.  It's filled with the dramatic lives of pop-stars, and jumpscares galore to thrill teenagers.  In the end, I wasn't as sad for the ghost as I usually am, but I was thoroughly entertained!

-Joanna

The Separation - a short film by Robert Morgan

The Separation
Released 2003
Directed by Robert Morgan

Wait a minute, I thought this was Media Wednesday...  What are you doing talking about a short film, Joanna?

Valid point.  I know that we review a movie or seven on Fridays, but there's so much amazing visual horror work being done out there that it's really hard to not talk about it.  What about music videos?  They're short films set to music, so where does that put us?  I've decided that since there are so many feature-length movies out there, those are what Fridays are for.  Thus short films, animations, music videos, and recordings of performance art can fit into Spooky Media Wednesdays.

Set to a cripplingly beautiful rendition of Claire de Lune played on a music box, The Separation might be the most emotional stop-motion short I've ever experienced.  The content is gruesome, but the heart-breaking expressiveness of the models will have you cringing and choking up in turn.

The story of this ten-minute vignette follows conjoined twins through their long lives.  In the beginning, we see them in the womb, connected along one side of their torso.  Then, they are in a recovery room.  The room has two beds, but they sit together on only one.  They play with a doll, and tuck a rose into its swaddling.  The scent of the flower makes them smile.

Then, with nightmarish suddenness, they are separated.  One brother has difficulty walking, permanently imbalanced by the lack of his twin.

As men, they work together in a doll shop.  One inserts eyes into rubber heads with a vicious machine, the other sews fabric bodies.  In their own ways they long for the connection they once knew.  When they recognize the longing and loneliness they both suffer, they solemnly make a plan to sew themselves back together.

They build a massive sewing machine.  It's a monster of hissing, squealing noise and churning metal, the huge needle stabbing at a two-person throat plate...

The most striking thing about this short is the emotionality of the figures.  Rather than reaching for the low-hanging fruit of uncanny-valley dolls, Morgan has created a world where his crumpled, fragile, imperfect figures evoke pathos.  Their eyes are deeply expressive, and their delicately colored wax faces convey an intense humanity.  The softness of their flesh is brutally juxtaposed by the industrial relentlessness of the machine.

This is a film about longing, and how sometimes the thing we long for can never be.  All we can achieve is memory.  Far more horrifying than an industrial accident or the disfigurements of the body is the disfigurement of the soul.

If you're interested in more of Robert Morgan's work that is less emotionally grueling and scarier in the traditional sense, I highly recommend Cat with Hands.  It's everything spooky about fairy-tales, everything uncanny about stop-motion models, and deeply atmospheric.  Morgan has said in interviews that Cat with Hands could someday be made into a feature-length film.  I hope he does.  Then I can write about it for a Friday.

-Joanna

Tree-Man Syndrome

This is Dede Koswara, and, sadly, this photograph is entirely real.  It is not some set of make-up effects from a Stan Winston School dropout.  It's the result of an extremely rare genetic disorder known as Epidermodysplasia verruciformis, a.k.a. Tree-Man Syndrome.

Individuals with this disorder are extremely susceptible to Human Papillomaviruses (HPV) on the skin.  Once HPV infects the person, their bodies are incapable of fending off the virus, and it multiplies out of control.  This produces layers of scaly macules (changes in color), and papules (fluidless bumps), usually concentrated around the hands, feet, face, and genitals.  More benign cases only suffer from flat, wart-like lesions over the body.  More malignant cases, like that of Dede Koswara, produce carcinomas and polymorphic legions.

In essence, individuals with this disorder cut or scrape themselves (usually during adolescence), breaking the skin.  At that point, they are infected by HPV, and soon their skin begins to grow into hard, scaly, rootlike structures.  It overwhelms their fingers and features, making it difficult or impossible to eat and continue everyday life.

Treatments include surgeries to remove the growths, but this is a temporary coping mechanism rather than a cure.  Various drugs and supplements are currently being tested with mixed results.

Photographs of Dede Koswara first appeared on the internet in late 2007.  As one of the most severe cases of Tree-Man Syndrome to date, he was quickly picked up by a number of American tv shows on the Discovery Channel, TLC, and ABC.  They chronicled the story of how his life fell apart once his growths became overwhelming.

When he was 10 years old, Dede was playing in the forest near his home in Java and cut his knee.  Soon warts began appearing around the cut.  They spread.  It took years, but the growths eventually crept over Koswara's body.  Though they didn't hurt or itch, they smelled terrible.  He got married and had two children.  But by the time he was 28, the growths had completely covered his hands, rendering them totally useless.  He was no longer able to do his job as a construction worker.  His wife left him.  Without the ability to work, Koswara joined a travelling freakshow to support his kids.
It was during this time that pictures of him surfaced, attracting the attention of documentary-makers.
During 2008, Dede received experimental surgery to remove some of the growths from his extremities.  It was successful, and allowed him the use of his hands for the first time in 10 years (he was 34 at the time).  At the same time, doctors gave him chemotherapy to bring the HPV under control.  Unfortunately, the treatment was cut short when his liver began to fail.

In a turn of international drama, before the treatment could be completed by an American dermatologist named Gaspari, the Javanese government became involved.  They kicked Gaspari out of Java on suspicion of taking blood and tissue samples abroad for commercial purposes.

Since the treatment, Koswara's warts have begun to grow back.  He's had to return to his parents house where they clean him and feed him; dress him in his specially zippered shirts.

I'll leave you with a quote from Koswara himself:

"They say I'm not human.  Whatever they want to say, that's fine.  I guess I am a Tree-Man...  My body has again betrayed me, but what can I do?"

-Joanna