The internet is currently overflowing with live-streamed lockdown events, ranging from celebrity concerts to fan conventions, but we have to admit we didn’t see this one coming: A live haunted house experience.

Set in the real house from The Conjuring, it sounds like a kind of live reality TV show. A paranormal investigation group called the “Dark Zone” organized the week-long broadcast called the “House Live.” The broadcast stars a family of paranormal investigators who bought the house in 2019. There’s a preview on Friday, and the full live stream will begin at noon ET on Saturday.

The Harrisville farmhouse in Rhode Island first came to prominence in the 1970s, when paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren claimed to find evidence of a 19th-century witch haunting the property. They were invited to investigate after the residents reported spooky phenomena in the house. In turn, this eventually inspired the 2013 movie The Conjuring, a hugely successful haunted house movie in a similar vein to The Amityville Horror.

Featuring seances, guest investigators, and an interview with one of the surviving members of the original haunting, the “House Live” sounds like a fun (and hopefully scary) event for fans of ghost-hunting shows. You will, however, have to pay to watch it––either $4.99 per day or $19.99 for the full week––which probably makes it a less enticing prospect for casual viewers.

Will the ghost-hunting TV format work during a live stream, without the usual editing tricks for added spookiness? Maybe not. But the whole appeal here is immersing yourself in the slim possibility of experiencing a live haunting, so if you’re a true believer (or just want to watch some true believers freak out in a haunted house), it’s still an appealing idea.

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Is Anderson Cooper married? 

The CNN host split with longtime boyfriend Ben Maisani in 2018. In a statement to USA Today, a representative for Anderson said, “Benjamin and I separated as boyfriends some time ago. We are still family to each other, and love each other very much. We remain the best of friends, and will continue to share much of our lives together.” 

So, who is Anderson Cooper dating?

Following the breakup, Anderson Cooper made multiple visits to Dallas in 2018, where he spent time with 33-year-old doctor Victor Lopez. Cooper has been spotted at hotels with Lopez, and the pair have appeared in social media posts together. 

The first photo of the pair together was posted to Lopez’s Instagram, along with the caption: “Weekend vibes.”

However, posts of the pair together seem to have stopped, and Anderson Cooper appears to remain single for now.

Celebrities and fans congratulate Anderson Cooper on the birth of his son.

Celebrities and fans of Anderson Cooper have been taking to social media to congratulate Cooper on the birth of his son. Andy Cohen, who appears to be such a good friend of Cooper’s that mutuals are pushing them to date each other, wrote on Instagram:

“‘New life, new hope!’ Wyatt Cooper, you couldn’t have come at a better time! I know a friend who can’t wait to meet you!” 

Cohen was referring to his own son, Benjamin Allen Cohen, who was born via surrogate in February 2019. 

Basketball-star Earvin Magic Johnson also took to social media, writing: “From Cookie and I, congratulations to Anderson Cooper on the birth of his new son Wyatt Morgan Cooper!”

Fellow CNN host Wolf Blitzer also congratulated Anderson, writing: “Now this is wonderful breaking news. Anderson Cooper just announced the birth of his beautiful Wyatt Morgan Cooper. So cute and adorable.”

Meghan McCain, a host of The View, added: “OMG!!!!!!! Congratulations Anderson Cooper! What an absolutely beautiful baby! Love and blessings to you all.”

We wish Anderson and Wyatt all the best! And we’re sure that Anderson will make an amazing father.

“The fact of the matter is this is fucking America.”

The man who answers the phone at the number listed for the owner of four “Reopen” websites is initially extremely guarded. He refuses to tell the Daily Dot his name and insists that he is not Brad Butcher, the person GoDaddy lists as the sites’ owner—a claim that stretches credulity more as he talks.

Whoever he is, his reticence is understandable. He’s been doxed. People have threatened his life. All for being the alleged owner of four URLs.

Records show that on April 14, four Reopen sites—reopennc.com, reopenfl.com, reopenmi.com, and reopenny.com—were registered to a Brad Butcher of Sebastian, Florida. All was quiet for a few days.

Then hell broke loose.

It began with a Reddit post about someone in Florida buying dozens of Reopen websites. The post posited that the domains were involved with an astroturfing campaign to end social distancing restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic. The post went viral.

That someone definitely wasn’t Brad Butcher.

It was Michael Murphy of Jacksonville, Florida. Murphy, a self-described “old hippie” told the Daily Dot that he bought up the Reopen URLs to keep them from “fringe groups.”

“I’m not particularly political, but I felt like the insanity had gone too far,” Murphy said. “I started scooping up these names to give them to a reputable organization.”

Doxed and deluged with threatening calls and emails, Murphy quickly used a service to mask his identifying information.

The man who answered the phone number that purportedly belongs to Brad Butcher was in the midst of his own onslaught of threats. His phone rang at all hours. People yelled, cursed, and threatened to murder him.

Asked why he didn’t use a service to conceal his own information, he says that Butcher, who he claims to know, “probably” tried doing that twice to no avail. Two days later, the owner of one site’s identifying information has since been concealed.

But the man is surprisingly good-natured about the whole thing, however.

His guard lowering, though not enough to give his name, whether Brad Butcher or not, he chuckles. “It doesn’t seem like your upper echelon,” contacting him about the sites.

He says one person offered to pick him up an Egg McMuffin at a nearby McDonald’s on their way to kill him.

“They offered my last meal because it was up the road on the satellite.”

Speaking hypothetically, as he does throughout the conversation, he says that if he did buy the sites, it would probably be because he’s concerned about the country and the economy.

“If I weren’t a nobody and I had a stake in this, I would probably be on the side of thinking that a state like North Carolina might as well be reopening the business, all businesses,” he says.

He insists that the sites aren’t associated with any Facebook group, conservative benefactor, or organization. Only one—reopennc.com—is live; the other three redirect to it.

There you can buy T-shirts, yard signs, and stickers with messages like “Liberate,” “Essential,” and “Buy American.”

“Let’s get business open by the facts and numbers, locally. ReopenNC. Reopen North Carolina. Reopen ALL States. We are contributing to business through business. We are promoting getting business back on track, everywhere!” the site explains.

“We believe in the constitution. We believe in Business in the USA.”

It’s essentially an attempt to make some money in a crisis that has left millions unemployed.

America is, after all, a capitalist country.

Although he says he’s not affiliated with a political party, the man admits he leans right. He doesn’t like what he sees from Democrats, who he says are “violent and ugly” in their push to drastically change the country.

“We’re misguiding our population to believe that America … capitalism is bad … I don’t want to see America become a socialist country.”

He thinks that the country was on the right track before the coronavirus pandemic. Now he frets that people are giving up freedom, potentially permanently. And he’s worried about a depression and widespread poverty.

As to the pandemic, he isn’t convinced by some of what’s said about coronavirus, but he isn’t a denier, either.

He believes that business closures and social distancing efforts have been successful, and that the peak happened weeks ago. (Many experts agree that the peak is past in many states, though a few project it happening in coming weeks. A resurgence is, of course, also possible.)

In his opinion, it’s time to start lifting restrictions. He thinks it’s crazy that people are so violently opposed to reopening businesses that they’d threaten someone’s life for merely disagreeing.

“I’m not a bad person…” he says. “[The narrative being pushed is that] people that want their business open are really bloodthirsty animals—and that’s really anti-American.”

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Despite government pressure to end lockdowns, it won’t be safe to go to the movies for a while. But when cinemas do reopen, what will that actually look like?

Studios are delaying release dates into 2021, or shifting theatrical releases to VOD. The Academy Awards just made some VOD releases eligible for Oscars next year, opening the door for more dramas to skip theatrical release and still win awards. AMC Theatres are now in a feud with Universal, refusing to screen any Universal movies until the studio backs down from releasing films online. The Russo Brothers want to re-release their Avengers movies to entice audiences back to theaters, just in case Marvel wasn’t ubiquitous enough already. But here’s a better idea: Once it’s actually safe to go out again, cinema chains should fill the half-empty release calendar with classic films, reintroducing old favorites to new audiences.

Unless there’s a widespread re-release (for instance the 40th anniversary of Alien), old movies only tend to screen in repertory theaters. These theaters were already struggling before the pandemic, partly thanks to Disney mothballing a ton of vintage Fox movies after the Disney/Fox merger. Disney wants to prioritize new releases, and apparently that means eradicating competition from older films like The Sound of Music or Fight Club, which are now much harder to screen in theaters. But if the last few months have taught us anything, it’s that big changes can happen fast. The chaotic state of cinema in 2020 creates a perfect opportunity to experiment with screening different movies in different ways.

In theory, streaming services make it easier to access old movies. In practice, these platforms prioritize new releases, especially their own original content. That’s why your Netflix front page always promotes something like Extraction or The Witcher or the latest two-star Adam Sandler comedy. And while all of the big-name classics—The Godfather, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz—are available on VOD, a lot of them aren’t on subscription services like Netflix, the most popular streaming platform in the U.S. You can’t casually browse and stumble across them, you have to know what you’re looking for and then rent it.

This is where repertory theaters traditionally stepped in, curating older films that audiences will enjoy, whether that’s Jaws or Citizen Kane or Rashomon. Now (or rather, in a few months) is an ideal time to get the ball rolling again, for audiences who are keen to see movies in person after months being cooped up at home. Netflix is good for some things, but it just isn’t the same as watching a great film in a crowded theater.

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If you visit the website of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, you’ll see a mysterious countdown clock. It’s teasing some kind of event on May 4, but no one knows what that event actually is.

It’s been 12 years since the publication of the last Twilight novel, Breaking Dawn, and almost four years since Meyer’s last non-Twilight novel, a spy thriller called The Chemist. So naturally, there’s a lot of speculation that the countdown is leading up to a new book announcement.

As is often the case with authors who got famous from one particular book series, there’s much more hype for the possibility of more Twilight than there is for a new original novel like Meyer’s The Host or The Chemist. Judging by social media, fans are still hoping that Meyer will finally publish Midnight Sun, the unreleased Twilight companion novel told from vampire Edward Cullen’s perspective.

Stephanie Meyer seems to be gearing up to release Midnight Sun (took the draft down from her site, moved Twilight up on her homepage, announced a 4 day long space themed countdown that is across all of her social profiles) and I am. Honestly hyped. Years of waiting are paying off pic.twitter.com/CA1TlBp76r

— maggie 🍒 (@stardustschild) April 29, 2020

Midnight Sun was originally planned for release shortly after the original four Twilight books, but Meyer stopped writing in 2008 after several chapters were leaked online. The experience was so upsetting that Meyer went on an indefinite hiatus from the book.

When she eventually got around to continuing it again, Midnight Sun was beset by another problem: Grey, E.L. James’ Fifty Shades Of Grey spinoff told from Christian Grey’s perspective. If Meyer had announced Midnight Sun shortly after, she’d look like she was copying an author whose work, ironically enough, was originally based on Twilight.

As of this week, some of the Midnight Sun draft chapters are still available on Meyer’s website. There’s no evidence either way that Meyer is planning to publish a new Twilight book or another project entirely, so fans really will have to keep their eyes peeled for whatever happens on Monday.

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