ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LOONS: CARL KOLCHAK
At one time, Karel “Carl” Kolchak was a rising star in the now-moribund field of print journalism. He routinely exposed political and corporate corruption, though his highly abrasive personality kept him from reaching the big time.
Kolchak's descent into lunacy began in Las Vegas, where he was a reporter for a second-rate paper that no longer exists. While covering an admittedly bizarre series of murders (in which the victims were drained of their blood), Kolchak somehow convinced himself that the killer, Janos Skorzeny, was a vampire. He doggedly insisted that police arm themselves with crosses, mallets and wooden stakes, and that they drive a stake through Skorzeny's heart. When police killed Skorzeny in a shootout, Kolchak screamed “cover-up” and lost his job.
A year later, he turned up in Seattle, where his old editor from Las Vegas, Tony Vincenzo, inexplicably rehired him. This time, the clearly delusional Kolchak tried (and failed) to convince police that a serial killer stalking Pioneer Square was Dr. Richard Malcolm, a Civil War-era physician who had developed an elixir that unnaturally prolonged his life. However (per Kolchak), the elixir was only good for 21 years, at which point Malcolm needed to make another batch. The primary ingredient (of course) was the blood of freshly killed women. Unsurprisingly, his second descent into paranoia got Kolchak booted from the newspaper.
He next turned up in Chicago, working again for Tony Vincenzo (who must have had a severe masochistic streak), this time at a shoestring operation called the Independent News Service. During his time in the Windy City, Kolchak suffered from one psychotic episode after another. Among the beings he claimed to encounter: a second vampire, a werewolf, a zombie, invisible space aliens, a shape-shifting Native American medicine man, a politician who had literally sold his soul to the Devil, a homicidal android, a prehistoric ape man, a giant erect-walking lizard, a Louisiana swamp monster, and even Helen of Troy. Kolchak's reign of error frequently incurred the wrath of the Chicago P.D., who regarded the so-called reporter (and rightly so) as a demented pain in the ass.
After I.N.S. wisely fired him, Kolchak flew under the radar for some years, but resurfaced with the rise of the Internet and its embrace of pseudo-scientific bullshit. The ex-reporter has a substantial on-line following that has led to magazine and TV interviews regarding his ostensible experiences with the paranormal. At this writing, there is even a book deal in the works.
DIAGNOSIS: Dangerously unhinged and determined to convince people that his claims are not merely the result of untreated psychosis. At one time, we could have written Kolchak off as a harmless kook. But he is now a social media sensation who was recently named one of the 50 Most Influential People on the Internet. That makes him a serious threat to logic, reason, and just plain sanity.
