Tag Archives: The Janesville Baby

July 24, 2013 · 1:42 pm

Ten day challenge day 5: top blog posts

10 Day Write Blog Challenge button200Here we are at day 5! Halfway through the challenge!

Today’s prompt:

Show off 3 of your best blog posts (with links!)

Why are these your best (so far!). Consider comments, page visit stats, or the content.

My top three are really an illustration of: author platform, you’re doing it wrong. That being said, if I cared deeply about that sort of thing, my blog wouldn’t have the name Writing Wrongs, would it now? So, drum roll please, for my top three blog posts:

Part 1: I want to be an Airborne Ranger

I remain amazed and humbled at how many people continue to read my Blogging Airborne series. It gets so much traffic, I’ve been thinking of compiling the posts, doing a bit of polishing, and offering it in e-book format. I suspect some people may want to read the series, but would rather not do it on the computer.

George Clooney doesn’t live here anymore

The popularity of this post simply makes me laugh. Plan on stalking Mr. Clooney? Be sure to stop by my blog first. I suspect it’s the inclusion of photos that makes this post land in my top ten month after month. Well, that and the varied antics of Mr. Clooney.

Life less creepy: The Janesville Baby

Come for George Clooney, stay for the creep out–my reminiscence about that unexplained doll hanging in the window of a house in a small, southern Minnesota town. The owner of the house died last year, and the doll was removed, but this post ended up linked on a site about the doll, so it gets a fair number of visits.

So, to summarize my blog in three phrases:

  • Airborne School
  • George Clooney
  • the Janesville Baby.

Honestly, I think this reveals more about me than I want it to.

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January 4, 2012 · 7:53 pm

Life less creepy: The Janesville Baby

I’m trying to remember the first time I saw the Janesville Baby. I was in elementary school (pretty sure) and I think it was a field trip, although whether it was a school field trip or one for Girls Scouts, I really don’t know.

I wasn’t prepared to see it, I do know that. I’d never heard of the Janesville Baby before. But there she was. A doll. Hanging in an upper window. In an old house. Glimpsed briefly, through the smudged window of a school bus. I think I cried out:

“There’s a doll hanging in that window!”

Some of the kids saw it; others didn’t. It did generate much speculation, as only a doll handing in a window could among elementary school children.

It was the right kind of creepy.

I saw it several times while growing up in southern Minnesota. Even better, the Greyhound bus I took to the University of Wisconsin-Madison passed right through Janesville. No one at school ever believed me about the Janesville Baby (unless they hailed from southern Minnesota). So every time the bus drove through Janesville, I’d crane my neck to look and confirm:

Yes, yes, the baby is still there.

It’s not my imagination.

And it’s still creeping me out.

No matter what people say on the video or in the comments, for me, the Janesville Baby invokes the same visceral response as clowns or those movies about dolls that come to life in the middle of the night.

That being said, I’m glad this piece of my childhood is still intact, that it’s inspiring stories and wonder and–with a little luck–creeping out a new generation of elementary school children.

More about the Janesville Baby (article no longer online). I think my favorite comment is:

Only in the ridiculously reserved state of Minnesota could someone do something like that and not ever be asked about it for 30 years.

To be fair, I think people have asked. Mr. Wendt simply isn’t talking.

So there you go. Your dose of creepiness for the day. You can thank me later, say at 2 a.m., when you can’t fall to sleep.

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