Zombies. Superheroes. Psychic sex.

Need we say more?

Today, the second half of the Weird, Wicked Weird annual wrap-up.

Hanging up their capes?

The streets of L-A may soon be down two superheroes.

Significant, because there were only two to start.

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Slapjack and Dreizehn are thinking of moving on.

The twenty-something boyfriend and girlfriend have been, separately, dressing up in costume for years, maintaining secret identities and patrolling the streets for scofflaws or people in need of a hand. They met through the online Real Life Superhero movement. Slapjack is local; Dreizehn settled here earlier this year.

Since spring, they’ve walked Twin Cities streets in the wee hours several nights a week.

They approached the Sun Journal in the wake of the popular “Kick-Ass” movie that made, in their opinion, doing what they do look just a little too easy. (Though both go out with protective gear like batons and electrified brass knuckles, Dreizehn has been threatened, beaten up and hit by a car in the line of uber-Good Samaritan duty.)

Before the story ran, both families weren’t aware of the pair’s extracurricular activities.

Since?

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No dots have been connected, says Slapjack. “As far as I know, nobody really has an idea.”

They started cutting back on the nightly excursions this fall. Moving, packing, working and superheroing can take its toll, he said.

Slapjack said he isn’t sure how soon he and Dreizehn will resume patrols in their new, bigger city, a city that could include, for the first time, other costumes.

“It’s like going to a new school; you lose all your friends,” he said. “If you’re part of a club or something you have to go join a new group of people and kind of learn their ways.”

‘Boogeymen.’ ‘Psychic Sex.’ Altogether big plans.

Cable TV has, thus far, not come knocking for “Supernatural Hotspots,” the show based on a Manchester, N.H., demonologist and psychic medium who filmed what they’d hoped to be a second episode for that show at the Empire Dine and Dance in Portland a year ago.

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But, six books, a radio station and a few high-profile cameos later and who needs cable TV?

In 2010, demonologist Katie Boyd authored books like “Haunted Closets: True Tales of the Boogeyman” and “Rhode Island’s Spooky Ghosts and Creepy Legends.”

In October, psychic medium Beckah Boyd debuted “Psychic Sex.”

“It has a mix of relationship-strengthening exercises, as well as psychic practices and it also includes a little bit of sex magic,” Beckah said.

Boyd and Boyd do less ghost hunting these days with their group, Ghost Quest — there isn’t time. In May, Beckah became co-owner of an Internet radio station, Tenacityradio.com with a mix of live programs every week (”The Gut and Bone Show,” “So That’s Paranormal?”) Katie’s had appearances on an October episode of Animal Planet’s show “The Haunted” and on MTV News.

In 2011, the pair are looking to form their own media company, launch two quarterly magazines (Supernatural Hotspots: A Haunting New England Journal and The Psychic Switch) and create a line of either online or DVD informational courses, sort of a how-to for paranormal groups and up-and-coming demonologists.

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“Katie and I have been doing this, now it’s running on 10 years, we know that this is a labor of love, not a field that you’re going to make money in, at all,” Beckah said. “If you can get on TV then you’re lucky. Either that or you’re really, really persistent.”

Zombies: Headed your way in April. Dead sea captains: Working on a deal

Nathan Oliver’s micro-budget film, “The Zombies Are Coming To Town!” — a movie about a B-movie ransacked by zombies — is set to debut in April 2011.

The Maine native spent 15 days filming in Limestone, Westfield and Caribou last summer after holding an open undead casting call.

“Every person except two in the cast and crew was local to Aroostook County,” said Oliver, who lives in Montreal.

The feature-length film, his first, is nearly out of the image editing room and heading soon for sound, he said. Oliver, the writer, producer and director, has been posting short clips and character profiles on the film’s Facebook page as he goes. (The clips are spatter-heavy; he’s not bashful with the fake blood.)

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“The Zombies Are Coming To Town!” will have a short run at the Braden Theater in Presque Isle in April. He’s working to get into other Maine theaters. After that, it’s on to DVD.

“(Zombies) never were not hot — they’re only becoming mainstream,” said Oliver. “There’s something to the idea of life continuing after death that is either a) shocking, b) gross, or c) hilarious.”

Another movie filmed in Maine this summer just got out of initial post-production.

Ralph DiBacco wrote the script for “Back to the Beyond,” his brother Kevin directed, and they shot on location on Long Island, off the Portland coast, last May.

The story, a homage to an episode of the old TV serial “One Step Beyond,” involves a murderous sea captain, haunted grounds and a paranormal team called in to investigate.

The film is roughly 75 minutes, feature-length.

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“To me, it’s better than expected,” Ralph DiBacco said. “It’s got a creepy feel to it — that was accomplished a lot through our actors and pacing.”

After the holidays, he said, they plan to start showing screeners to production and distribution companies hoping to ink a deal. The brother’s first film, “Willow’s Way,” went straight to DVD in 50 countries.

“Our hope is always for a theatrical release,” he said. But, “for theatrical release, you have to have at least one A-lister. We have some very recognizable B-listers.”

DiBacco said he and his brother are weighing another script he’s written for their third venture about the last man alive.

“Back to the Beyond” had 12 actors, a big cast for a low-budget movie, DiBacco said.

A flick about the last man would keep the cast count down.

Weird, Wicked Weird is a monthly feature on the strange, intiguing and unexplained in Maine. Send ideas, photos and haunted New Year’s confetti to kskelton@sunjournal.com


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