Thursday, October 15, 2009

The boy in the balloon

From Tom Piccirilii:

Hey Ed: so an experimental helium balloon built by a storm chaser in his backyard took off with his six-year-old son inside. Family lives five minutes from us. Talk about life mirroring fiction. It's my story "Between the Dark and the Daylight"!

Balloon finally landed after two and a half hours in the air and having traveled something like 100 miles, sometimes as high as 10,000 feet. Kid wasn't in it. The news copters started following within 20 minutes of it lifting off, so now it looks like the kid jumped or fell shortly after take off, though he still hasn't been found yet.

best,
Tom Piccirilli


Ed here: Tom's right about the connection between his story and the balloon story today. But since I just learned that the family was on a tv reality show...I wonder what's going on here. I hope the kid's all right. That's the important thing.

5 comments:

Tom Piccirilli said...

Boy's been found safely hiding in a box in the garage attic. Hoax?

Deb said...

I find it hard to believe that parents would ever pretend their child was in danger--I'm too much a believer in karma. However, didn't the kid say something like, "We were doing it for a show" when he was asked why he hadn't revealed his whereabouts?

There's a real good plot for a story about how being on "reality" TV warps the values of the participants (and viewers) in this.

Todd Mason said...

As soon as I'd been informed that the family had been on WIFE SWAP {sic/sick) twice (!), I was pretty sure that this was just a pathetic ploy.

Deb said...

If it is a hoax, it's shocking that the parents could (1) pretend their child was missing/imperiled, and (2) allow law enforcement resources to be spent on a wild goose chase. How self-absorbed does someone have to be to perpetrate this sort of nonsense?

Wait--don't answer that.

Anonymous said...

At Nick Mamatas'blog, he links to a FoxNews (not the most trustworthy of sources, granted) article. Apparently the parents owe a lot of money, and tried getting various movies and TV shows off the ground in LA a while back. Sounds like a publicity ploy. I feel sorry for the kid and his siblings.

Jeff P.