The outsized importance of recently deceased pop star Michael Jackson in Stockton, Calif., may have resulted in people hallucinating his image in a birch tree stump located in the town: “To Stockton, Michael Jackson meant more to us than Jesus, to some people. I think they’re both about even,” one neighbor told local news station CBS 13, which investigated the charges. Believe it or not, there is actually a semi-legitimate reasoning behind this seemingly absurd statement!


I thought all this birch-related mania was just the result of your garden-variety celebrity idolatry, but a bit of research revealed that Jackson visited the town a few weeks after a gunman opened fire on a local elementary school and killed five people in 1989. Although not everyone was into Jackson’s visit! Some non-English-speaking students in the heavily Southeast Asian community were thrown into PTSD mode by the cavalcade of police, helicopters, and flashing blue lights that accompanied Jackson’s arrival—because the hoopla was eerily similar to what took place after the shooting went down. Ay yi yi. On the bright side, I’m sure someone has already made the “he came back to apologize” comment, so I don’t have to.


Family sees image of Michael Jackson in Tree Stump [CBS13 via The Awl]