NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Imminent swirling vortex of damnation Land developers for the iconic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo. (famous as the inspiration for the hotel in Stephen King’s The Shining) announced recently that they need more space and thus will dig up and move the hotel’s 12-gravesite pet cemetery. Neighbors told the Fort Collins Coloradoan in September that they feared the construction noise but somehow ignored the potential release of departed spirits (though an Animal Planet “dog psychic” who lives in Estes Park seemed to volunteer her services to calm the pets’ souls).

The war against “doing the right thing” —Teach our children well: (1) Officials at Milford Haven School in Pembrokeshire county, Wales, punished Rhys Johnson, 14, in October for violating the dress code against shaved heads. He was helping raise money for an anti-cancer charity after a third relative of his contracted the illness. (2) North Andover (Mass.) High School punished honor student and volleyball captain Erin Cox in October for giving a drunk classmate a ride home. Cox was clean and sober but violated the school’s “zero tolerance” attitude toward alcohol users (even though more student drunk-driving might result if sober friends feared school punishment).

—Walter Dixon knew that he was about to be relocated in December 2012 from a Joliet, Ill., correctional facility to begin serving a new federal drug conspiracy sentence, but instead, state officials mistakenly freed him. Dixon protested but said he was aggressively dismissed from the premises. It was not until September that he was finally rearrested and began his new sentence.

(Dixon was easily located because, though free, he had met regularly with his parole officer and was taking several vocational courses.)

Advice of counsel —After consulting with a lawyer, Evan Dobelle, president of Massachusetts’ Westfield State University, accused of billing the state for unauthorized travel expenses, is reportedly considering claiming that he actually “self-reported” the violations as soon as suspicions turned up. Dobelle says he would thus be entitled to the protection of the state “whistleblower” statute, which shields inside informers when they expose wrongdoing. (Dobelle was placed on paid leave in October.)

—In September, landlord Elwyn Gene Miller, 64, went on trial in Iowa City, Iowa, for spying on tenants in the small apartment building he owns — after apparently having constructed peepholes allowing him views into bathrooms and other areas, and having been spotted climbing from a crawl space after accessing one peephole. Nonetheless, as Miller’s lawyer pointed out, the law applies only to peeping for “sexual gratification,” and there is no “firsthand knowledge or observation” that Miller was “aroused” at the time he was spotted. (At press time, the judge was mulling a decision.)

—William Woodward of Titusville, Fla., awaiting trial on two murder counts in September, might normally have a weak defense under the state’s “stand your ground” law (which requires an “imminent” threat of a forcible felony) because evidence indicates that any threats against him were made previously and not at the time of the shooting. However, in a court filing, Woodward’s lawyers justified the pre-emptive ground-standing by referring to the “Bush Doctrine” employed by the U.S. in invading Iraq in 2003 (the U.S. “standing its ground” against Iraqi weapons of mass destruction). (The judge promised a ruling by November.)

—Chuck Shepherd