I must admit that the strongest memory I had of the “heavy metal” rock band Twisted Sister was not actually of the band, but a National Lampoon magazine I once owned. The cover bore the picture of an adorable but pitiful-looking dog with a .38 revolver pressed to its head. The cover threatened, “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog!”
It’s a well known fact that I’m a sucker for dogs, so I bought a copy. Even years prior to my involvement with animal rescue, I couldn’t resist the idea of saving that poor dog’s life. In retrospect, it may have been the best investment under five bucks I’ve ever made. That issue wasn’t just funny; virtually every word was hilarious. There were spoofs of arcade games like Space Invaders but called “Sperm from Space”, longer articles such as “The Death of Ed McMahon”…even the fake “Letters to the Editor” were priceless. When I read that issue of National Lampoon, I laughed so hard I cried, some of the jokes were so funny. Then my friends passed it around the room and read it in turn, shedding tears of laughter as well. Only our friend Jarvis read the whole magazine from cover to cover and never even cracked a smile, but he was the exception. There was a point to be made here, and it’s about Twisted Sister. One of the fake letters to the editor went something along these lines (from memory, so this is not a verbatim quote):
Dear Sir: I would like to completely disavow myself from any association with the bands AC/DC, Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, Motley Crue…after a long list of bands I couldn’t stand came the punchline. The letter was signed: “Sincerely, Satan – eternally damned, but not without taste.” I still chuckle at that memory…hopefully it’s one of the only things that Satan and I have in common.
Having never been a fan of the band, I couldn’t even remember the name of their biggest hit.
This was it!
Watching the video basically covers the extent of my knowledge when it comes to that particular band and their music. The video was interesting primarily because the kid was mimicking the guitar playing of The Who’s Pete Townshend, and the boy’s obnoxious father was played by Mark Metcalf a.k.a. “Doug Neidermeyer” from Animal House. When listening to the song itself, I found myself wondering if maybe Def Leppard hadn’t been that bad after all. And for whatever reason, Twisted Sister never became an acquired musical taste. The point of this article wasn’t to trash the band, however, but to talk about Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider.
On a television program titled Celebrity Ghost Stories, Snider looked barely recognizable without the fright wig, heavy stage makeup and spacesuit as he quietly described his real-life transformation from hardcore skeptic to a believer in ghosts, saying,
I’ve never been a believer in paranormal activity. I’m a bit more scientific, a little too logical, a little too rational. And I will always opt for a more believable explanation for any odd activity. If a cabinet door opens, a noise is made, a picture or you see something out of the corner of your eye — I’ve always explained it away.
Dee Snider interview, Celebrity Ghost Stories
That’s always what the rational mind always should first try to do. Just don’t ignore the result of the investigation if you fail to explain the phenomenon. Things started to change for Snider in August 2003 after his brother-in-law Vinnie was murdered during morning rush hour by a former business associate. Dee and his wife (and the police) knew the identity of the murderer but investigators lacked sufficient scientific evidence necessary for a conviction in court. The frustration was practically unbearable.
Guilt tormented Snider’s wife at the thought her brother’s killer was walking around free, and she felt helpless but her husband remained cynical. Inexplicable events continued in the house unabated. Dee Snider described the situation this way:
Shortly after Vinnie’s death, things started happening in the house. Things that I dismissed as — you know, things that happen. Pictures started falling off walls. I’m not talking about one or two, I’m talking about half dozen or a dozen. We ran into the room to see what fell, and my wife said, “That’s Vinnie, that’s Vinnie, he’s trying to reach out to me.”
During this time, one of the even more odd moments happened when we came home from dinner and heard my son’s drums playing. Shane was really angry because he knew that his younger brother Cody was on his drums. Shane immediately went over to the intercom and jammed the button, saying, “Cody, get off my drums!”
Dee Snider interview, Celebrity Ghost Stories
Cody walked out of the same room on the floor we were on and said, “I’m not on the drums.” There was nobody else in the house. There was nobody there to play the drums.
Even after those experiences, Snider remained skeptical while his wife Suzette convinced herself that her brother was haunting their house because she wasn’t doing enough to bring his killer to justice.
One night the television was blaring in their bedroom, and when Suzette asked Vinnie to give them a sign, the device switched off immediately. Dee said, “It wasn’t a delayed response. It was “Vinnie do something with the TV” and BAM! It goes off.”
Suzette wanted to consult a psychic, and Snider suggested they hire the best one he could find, which he described:
This psychic was not a warm and fuzzy, you know, look you in the eye and feed on your emotion sort of guy. He doesn’t look at you. He looks away and sits there with a pad and a pencil, and he keeps going like this the whole time (gestures in circles.) He wasn’t asking for any information from us. He just told us what Vinnie was telling him.
Dee Snider interview, Celebrity Ghost Stories
By the time the session ended, a strange thing had happened. Suzette became outraged and cynical, declaring the psychic a fraud and his “message” phony. Interestingly, the psychic had the exact opposite effect on her formerly skeptical husband. Dee believed the message the psychic allegedly related from Vinnie was legitimate: let it go…I’m happy now….it will all come out in the wash.
Suzette got angry because it wasn’t what she expected Vinnie to say. She had convinced herself that Vinnie wanted her to relentlessly pursue his killer, not let it go. She didn’t hear what she wanted to hear. Dee Snider said, “I, on the other hand, heard him [the psychic] answer every one of her questions. I heard him give her all the information she needed to hear.”
So Dee took a tape of the session home and transcribed it to paper, then asked Suzette to read the result. He told her, “Read what it says. Not who said it, but what was said. You’ve got your answers.”
Finally Suzette accepted the advice of their psychic, and let it go. Slowly but surely, things began to return to normal in the Snider household. Then one night as Dee, Suzette, Shane and Cody were watching TV together, they all saw Vinnie walk down their hall and disappear.
All the paranormal activity in the house finally ceased, and Vinnie’s alleged prediction that “it would all come out in the wash” came true. His murderer was finally arrested and brought to justice. When it was all finally over Snider confessed,
You know, as a believer, I’m going back over all the things I denied for months now. A dozen pictures falling off the wall, the television…I mean, I realize how ridiculous, ridiculously cynical I was being. And I know that believers, they see it, and they recognize it for what it is.
Dee Snider interview, Celebrity Ghost Stories
True fact, Mr. Snider.
Believers see clear evidence of the supernatural for what it is. If we accept evidence of ghosts for what it is, then we are accepting evidence of supernatural phenomena, though not necessarily evidence for a supernatural God. Even those of us who have never experienced the paranormal in the form of a “ghost” or apparition should remember the wisdom of Carl Jung, who said that we can honestly claim that we’ve never had a similar experience with a ghost (though I have), but we cannot say that you’ve never had one.
By the same token, science tells us that the law of conservation of energy says that energy can neither be created or destroyed, only converted into another form. When Vinnie’s body died, his brain became useless tissue, but science doesn’t have a clear idea of what happens to the metaphysical mind when the brain tissue has died. Is it possible that Vinnie was able to communicate with his sister Suzette and brother-in-law Dee from beyond the grave?
Dee Snider certainly seems to believe that it’s possible.
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