Goosebumps Kid

I was randomly recommended this YouTube video tonight in bed. 

Being a Goosebumps fan as a kid, I was curious about what had happened to the series. 

After hovering my finger for a bit, I decided to watch it. 

Suddenly, there I was. A kid with a pile of goosebump books on my head.

I turned to Johann and hollered triumphantly “it’s meeee!”

Johahn leaned over my iphone and said “What? No it’s not…wait….omg! That’s soooo cool!”

I was a huge Goosebumps kid back in the 90’s. Everyone knew me as having huge stacks of Goosebumps books piled around my bedroom. 

I truly loved the artwork on the covers of early Goosebump books and began amassing them, all steadily supplied to me by my grandfather John.  

I ended up owning far more Goosebumps books than I’d ever read. I had unlimited books if I wanted them. I wanted unlimited computer games, but my parents were strict about anything they would term as “audio visual stimulation”(I eventually found ways around it).

At the age I was in the photo, most of my literary investment actually went into re-reading my Mad Magazine comics over and over again. Also supplied by my grandfather John, reading Mad Magazines from such a young age probably did a lot of weird things to me. 

Even though I spent more time reading Mad Magazines, my Goosebump books were displayed in proud towers all around my room.

My auntie Sally, who happened to work for Fairfax Media in Sydney, one day asked me if some people could come and take some pictures of me with my Goosebump books. 

I felt very shy about it, from memory. The adults who came to take photos asked me to put the Goosebump books on my head. They were so excited and I remember they thought it was an awesome photo. They also took some other photos where I was supposed to look scared while pretending to read a Goosebump book with a torch. 

I remember hating the photos and feeling embarrassed about the whole thing. I was a very anxious boy. 

The photos ended going in a popular magazine in Sydney, much to my horror at the time. I buried it from my memory, eventually forgetting all about it.

I was probably about 6 years old in this photo. 

Here’s the YouTube video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kFtaQlJKk8Y&t

Take my leaves

My soul 

Sways in this breeze

Take 

The leaves that you please

The Black Dog

The Treffry Family come from Cornwall.

The Treffry Family, in medieval times, dominated the region around Foy from a castle called Place, otherwise known as the Treffry Castle. 

The Treffry’s appear to be a genetic mixture of English aristocracy and Jews. This was typical of the times. 

I have begun to embrace my Jewish side, and I am very interested in Jewish Kabbalah and King Solomon. The magick contained within this knowledge is real. 

My grandfather, John Treffry, had a father who was a Freemason. Freemasonry and Kabbalah have affinity. His name was also John Treffry, and he married my great grandmother Else Green(berg).

My great grandfather, the Freemason John Treffry, left Cornwall and started managing banks around Australia. My own father, Mark Treffry, tells stories of seeing John Treffry’s Freemason swords mounted in the living room of the family home.

But then a break happened.

My father and grandfather, Mark and John, decided to make a complete break from the Treffry clan. There was something in the Treffry atmosphere that they didn’t like. I don’t really know what it was. 

My father had travelled to Cornwall to visit the Treffry Castle, which still is inhabited by Treffry's to this day. My dad saw something there that made him want nothing more to do with the noble Treffry Family ever again. He forged a new future in Newtown, Sydney with my mother, and told us almost nothing of the Treffry’s and our noble past. We grew up humble. 

My dad, Mark Treffry, grew his hair long and embraced the 70’s as a proper Newtown hippy. A total break from the past and a new era of hope was before him.

My grandfather, John Treffry, was a great presence in my life. He was a strong, calm and loving man at all times. John always had pockets full of butter menthols and fisherman’s friends mints. John flowed with stories about old battles and war. He loved the Napoleonic Wars. He also loved Sean Connery and Roger Moore-era James Bond. I watched them all with him. 

I am writing about John Treffry now, in light of the many spiritual things that have happened to me recently.  

John Treffry, just prior to Covid lockdowns, developed cancer on the back of his neck. The cancer quickly spread and left John to waste away slowly in his bed at home. He was eventually a mere skull on a pillow. It was a very slow process of wasting away for John. 

As John’s state deteriorated, and within his final few weeks where he was in terminal agitation, an incredible thing happened.

A black dog, belonging to no one we knew, appeared in the room. It bounded to the foot of John’s bed and sat there, staring at him. 

Everyone was shocked. 

Eventually, the owner of the dog called out. The black dog had broken free from the owner outside and ran into the room, apparently, to visit John Treffry just before his death. 

Mary Treffry, John’s wife, would constantly talk about Black Dogs when I was a child. It was her favourite story. When my brother Eddy would get angry, Mary would often remark that he was overcome by the Black Dog. 

I have since researched the Black Dog and have discovered it is a well-known omen of Death in old England.

I now believe that the Black Dog came all the way from Cornwall to visit John Treffry just prior to his death. I also believe that perhaps all Treffry’s get this same visit when our time has come. 

Maybe something happened to the Treffry’s a long time ago. Maybe a Treffry, long ago, was attached to a Black Dog. That Black Dog is now passed down through the family as a signal to prepare for the end of life. 

The Spider

 I was in a house with my family. 

The house was a strange hybrid of all the houses we had lived in over the years - Newtown, Dulwich Hill, Wentworth Falls.

Living in the attic of this house was a spider. 

The spider was a humanoid monstrosity that resembled Sam as a small boy, but hardly recognisable. The upper half of the body was human, with the bottom half being a black abdomen, with eight shiny legs looming over the shoulders of the boy. The upper human portion revealed a twisted torso, leading up to a face that was fixed in a strangled, silent scream. 

Underneath the strangled scream was a maniacal and gleeful voice. The voice was saying tormenting and teasing things, but I couldn’t make out the words. They were drowned out by the loud sounds of the clicking and clacking of scuttling legs.

The humanoid spider was emerging from all places around the house, scuttling after me, and stinging me repeatedly with a large needle-like fang that protruded from its front leg. 

I was trying to ask it what it wanted, but I wasn’t able to grasp onto anything. 

The other members of my family appeared to be in different sections of the house, either lost or looking for something.

Everyone was alone in a seperate section of the house, and distracted from one another. It seems they didn’t register the presence of each other, and were somehow blinded. 

Suddenly, my mother frantically called out to me from a room upstairs. 

I went up to the room and saw my mother frozen in place. She said that she could not walk over this area, and that there was a strong presence.

In front of my mother was a small grey stain on the carpet. 

When I saw the grey stain I was suddenly filled with immense fear. 

The grey stain was the key to it all. 

I could barely scream, because my mouth and throat were so dry that the nerves were all numb. 

“It’s here!”

You were there

When I broke my leg and couldn’t walk, you were there. 

When I lost it all and could scarcely talk, you were there 

When I fell from grace and felt such shame, you were there 

When my brother died and left my heart in pain, you were there.

You were there. 

Pan Rises

Pan Rises 2025

 

My Dad, and me

 

Garnet Street

 

Tori gig. It was 3 hours long. Epic

 

My next gig - Tori

 

The Triangle Forest

This is where we were, my brother and I. We were in the triangular-shaped forest that is covered with bats. 

We rowed our boat around the point of the green pyramid and then south-west towards the railway lines. 

When we reached the railway lines back in 2013, we saw that the creek had become too overgrown with submerged foliage to continue, and so we turned around and rowed back a short way in the direction we came from. 

Drawn to the shore and wanting to explore it, my brother and I disembarked somewhere towards the middle/tip of the pyramid on the western side of the triangle forest. We walked a short way in an easterly direction across the pyramid, and I lost Sam briefly in the forest. 

The triangular island at Nanny Goat Hill is a very mysterious place. It has an undeniable aura of something raw, primitive and old, intertwined with the looming, leafy monoliths. 

My brother and I agree that it was a beautiful place, but I privately found its beauty was combined with something unsettling. I never really knew what it was, until now. 

11 years ago, when we returned to our boat and began our journey back towards home, something in the triangle forest has stayed with me ever since that day. My mind’s eye persistently wanders there, exploring the emerald green pillars of leaves with my brother.

Paneye

 

Sad Ants

Do you think that something that would make an ant upset, wouldn’t make your heart upset?

The Mayfly

Just before the family made our way to the Conservation Hut, millions of mayflies appeared from seemingly nowhere and began to surround us all. They covered my body, crawled under my shirt and all through my hair. 

I walked down to the trampoline with the kids. Mayflies filled the inside of the trampoline nets so we all crawled inside and became covered in the flies.

Mayflies are a symbol of transformation, transience and renewal. We have never seen Mayflies at our Blue Mountains house before.

My hair full of mayflies and, according to my mother, a very familiar looking King Parrot flying under my left elbow. 

Is that you, Sam? 

Paneye - In Heartache's Shade (2013)

Samuel George Treffry Forever

 

My Brother Sam

11 years ago, in 2013, I went to Wolli Creek near Tempe station with my brother Sam. 

Sam had acquired a boat, and he suggested that we row it down Wolli Creek to Nanny Goat Hill. 

It was a beautiful sun dappled day. We played chess, navigated the mangroves, and eventually arrived at a strange island with bats sleeping in trees and big pillars of leaves that formed a cave-liked shape around us. 

My boating trip down Wolli Creek with my brother Sam is one of my truly cherished memories with him. I captured these moments with him on video and it has now become an extremely sad video for me to watch.

My brother Sam Treffry committed suicide 2 days ago. In his suicide note he revealed that he had been diagnosed with a very serious medical condition called ENS - Empty Nose Syndrome. This rare, incurable and extremely difficult to treat disease is so severe that it has many recorded cases of sufferers taking their own life. This information is all over the medical literature on ENS.

Sam described in his note that he had been forced to withdraw from his university course and had stopped work entirely. He had been unable to sleep and entered an extremely dark place. He hid all of this from our family and me. 

My brother died at 34 years old. It’s unclear in his letter how long he knew about his ENS diagnosis, but it seemed to be a recent diagnosis and a rapid spiral after Sam sought various solutions in private for his incurable disease. 

ENS can only be developed by routine nose operations that remove tissue. My brother had multiple nose surgeries in his teenage years for sinus issues and septum corrections. It apparently took a long time for his ENS symptoms to reach a critical level where Sam thought that he had to seek relief in death. 

Prior to his death, my brother was working at a hospital and a hotel, studied a town planning degree and generally seemed happy, although he did constantly seem very tired. One of the symptoms of ENS is insomnia resulting from breathing difficulty. 

Sam’s suicide was a devastating blow to my family. We never knew about his ENS diagnosis and we never got a chance to help him, with full knowledge of the suffering he was enduring.

I love you Sam. I miss you so much. I wish you had reached out to me. I would have moved heaven and earth to take care of you. I would have ensured you received the treatment, love and care you needed, and you deserved. 

…but you didn’t reach out. You chose to fight this battle alone and now you are gone. I will have to stay with our cherished memories now, until I see you on the other side where I know you are waiting for me and the rest of our family. 

Until then, I’ll think of you always, Sam, and I’ll never forget what a brave, sensitive, hilarious, mischievous and mysterious person you were and still are. 

For me, Sam, you haven’t truly left. You’ll live on in my thoughts, my dreams, my blood and amongst all the tears I’ve shed for you. 

I Inherit Sleep (Alt Spring version 2024)

Feral Jesus

 Feral Jesus (part 2). Feral Jesus getting some Brunch

Ket to

 

Shika

A night with Shika 

 

The old haunt

 

Upcoming EP - Cloth made of Sea Snails

 

It will definitely have Your Name Summons Memories on it, plus a potential collaboration or 3 with the one and only William Colvin of Hedge Fund. 

Upcoming gigs - Shika and Tori

 

The Bay

 

A nice review from Bandcamp’s Jes Skolnik

Link to the review:

 https://daily.bandcamp.com/essential-releases/bandcamp-essential-releases-february-9-2018

Conference of Treffrys