Ro’s Recs : Review Cabinet of Curiosities Episodes 3-5

Greetings Horror Addicts! I’m back with my review of episodes 3-5 in Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, now showing on Netflix. These three are the strongest so far, but I have yet to watch the final two. Read on for the titillating details…

Episode 3: Autopsy

This episode plays with time a bit, just enough to make the viewer discombobulated, which is exactly where the director wants you. I don’t want to go too deeply into this one because the twist at the end made it my favorite so far. It’s gory, it’s gruesome (like the title indicates, you see pretty much the entire autopsy process), it’s heartbreaking, and it’s so good. From the night sky in the opening shots to the walls of the mine, to the relationship between the coroner and sheriff…every single shot, every frame, is crucial to the story, and the less you know going in, the better. F. Murray Abraham and Glynn Turman are the crotchety old professionals you want leading you on the journey. “This is one of those nightmare specials. The kind you never get to the bottom of.” Because that bottom is…well, you just watch it. The story was written by Michael Shea and adapted by David S. Goyer, who brought us The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, and that same feeling of helplessness, as if no matter what course you take you’ll never win, is present in this story in droves. It was directed by David Prior.

Episode 4: The Outside

This segment examines one of my most prevalent nightmares: the pressure women put on themselves to be youthful and beautiful forever. I gave up the chase for youth and beauty years ago, but our heroine, Stacey, longs so desperately to fit in that she begins to be manipulated by a sinister force…or does she? Is it her own desire to be accepted by the attractive, popular women at work that leads her down a path toward self-destruction? Or is there truly a being tempting her from her very own TV screen. Actress Kate Micucci is stellar as misfit Stacey, and Martin Starr is the partner most folks would be grateful for. After watching this episode, you’ll want to turn off the TV and say “no, thank you” to that body lotion gift set your aunt tries to pawn off on you this holiday season. There is a particularly painful scene where poor Stacey attempts to fit in only to fail epically which makes us sympathetic to her plight, but that sympathy doesn’t last…The ending is manic, and the episode leaves me pondering misogyny, vanity, and the line between self-love and self-hate.

Episode 5: Pickman’s Model

This episode is based on a story from H.P. Lovecraft. It is visually stunning, deliciously tense, and it will have you gasping and yelling at your screen “no! No! Don’t do it! Don’t look!” An art student becomes disturbed by a classmate’s creations, and this sets off a chain of events that will eventually lead to destruction, loss, and madness. I was particularly excited to see Crispin Glover portraying yet another creepy character. I swear he never ages, and I’m not just referring to the aging in this particular story. Glover is truly gifted in roles such as this. But actor Ben Barnes as William Thurber has our utmost sympathy as he sees what others ignore. This episode also has me wondering who was responsible for the sets in this series because some of the houses are absolutely incredible, this one included! 

I’ll be back soon with my thoughts on the remainder of the episodes. I must add, as your musical guide here at Horror Addicts, that there is a soundtrack that has some particularly groovy tunes on it. Here’s a link for you to check out. Any favorites? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the show as well as the musical choices. For now, Stay Tuned…

The Walking Dead: A Finale but Not the End of the Road: Review by Megan Starrak

 

On November 20, 2022, The Walking Dead aired its finale and shuffled off into television history. The show was based on a successful comic book series authored by Robert Kirkman. Kirkman’s inspiration for creating the comics was director/filmmaker George A. Romero who directed The Night of the Living Dead movies that focused on a zombie apocalypse. 

During The Walking Dead’s 177 episodes, viewers followed the lives of an ever-expanding and shrinking group of survivors during a zombie apocalypse. Anchored by talented actors, including Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, Lauren Cohan, and many others, the show proved to be much more than walkers (i.e., zombies) killing and being killed. At its core, The Walking Dead was an incredibly human story. 

Many storylines illustrated the lengths the characters were willing to go to find ways to connect and just survive somehow while surrounded by desolation and danger. This feeling of danger was heightened when fans quickly learned that only a few of the characters were safe. Over the years, fans watched as dozens of characters they either loved or hated met their end, some of the deaths being more gruesome than others. 

One storyline that pulled at viewers’ heartstrings was during season two when Carol’s daughter Sophia disappeared. The group spent a good part of the season looking for her, always hoping that the child would be found alive. But they were in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and when Sophia was found, she had become a walker. So, for viewers, seeing Sophia as a walker and Carol helplessly looking on as her daughter was destroyed was an incredibly heartbreaking scene. 

The look of the undead was created by special effects artist and sometimes director of the show, Greg Nicotero, and his team of prosthetic and make-up artists. They worked tirelessly creating and refining the look of the walkers as the show went on, ensuring that they looked more decayed and desiccated as the years unfolded. Fans were equally enthralled and disgusted by just how detailed the walkers were. And when the walkers attacked the living, the special effects crew made sure that their bloody end looked as accurate as possible. 

However, just because The Walking Dead has reached its bloody end, it doesn’t mean fans will have to go without their favorite nightmare-inducing stories. Robert Kirkman’s world of walkers has expanded into what is being called The Walking Dead Universe. Multiple spin-off shows, including Fear the Walking Dead, which will air its eighth season in 2023, Walking Dead: Dead City, and Tales of the Walking Dead, will keep the dead walking for years to come.  

Horror Curated: When Hell Freezes Over, Blutgletscher

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When horror fans think of movies set in Hell frozen over here on earth, one of the movies that will make most lists is John Carpenter’s iconic movie, The Thing, and all the other movies that have been inspired by it. 

Tom Shankland’s 2008 The Children and Mark A. Lewis’s 2009 Thaw—starring Val Kilmer—are a couple movies that nod to Carpenter that I love, but my all-time favorite movie that took its cue from The Thing is Marvin Kren’s 2013 Blutgletscher (Blood Glacier).

While R.J. MacReady and his team were in Antarctica, Janek and his team are in the Austrian Alps studying global warming. Blutgletscher is set sometime in the future as the melt rate in the movie is much further than it is today.

Blutgletscher allows us to assume that the extremely hostile shape-shifting extraterrestrial organism that terrorized in The Thing not only survived but migrated 9,743 miles to where this movie is set.

But more about that in a second.

Janek and his dog Tinni, unlike MacReady in Antarctica, are long-term residents of the station in the Alps.

He is employed as a technician to keep all the equipment running and he has seen his fair share of scientific teams and quite frankly doesn’t really care for them. I didn’t blame him, the members of the current team are pretentious and treat him like shit despite the fact they wouldn’t be able to conduct research up there if it weren’t for him, which is highlighted in the opening scene…READ more Horror Curated NOW!

Horror Curated: ‘Twas the Night Before Creepmas by Nivek Tek

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‘Twas the Night Before Creepmas by Nivek Tek

‘Twas the night before Creepmas, and all through the tomb,
Not a creature was stirring, to seal your doom.
The corpses were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that the Krampus, soon would be there.
The ghouls were all nestled snug in their caskets.
They dreamt of severed heads in bright-colored baskets.
Cobwebs and dust covered the room,
And added a sparkle to the impending doom.
 When out in the graveyard arose such a clatter,
Awoken by screams and incessant chatter,
I climbed from my coffin upset and dismayed,
And thought to myself, “There’s hell to be paid.”
The moon shone brightly on freshly fallen snow,
Which was good, because I had just lost a toe.
When what to my eyes should suddenly appear,
But a big fat old man and a couple of deer. 
READ more Horror Curated NOW!

Historian of Horror : The Best Scrooge

Too often we confuse ‘best’ with ‘favorite’. And vice versa. I contend frequently with folks on social media who insist that their favorite movie (or song or book) is the best ever, despite the probability that they’ve never experienced any of the recognized classics that routinely top the lists compiled by prestigious bodies such as the American Film Institute, and therefore have no reasonable basis for comparison. I mean, really. The Shawshank Redemption is a very good film, true, but is it actually better than Citizen Kane? Lawrence of Arabia? Tokyo Story? Le Grande Illusion?

Pardon me while I laugh myself into a terminal case of hiccups. 

Likewise, everyone seems to have their own personal favorite film version of Charles Dickens’ classic novella, A Christmas Carol. Okay, so Muppets are all very nice, and musicals, as well, and certainly Mr. Magoo’s interpretation of Ebenezer Scrooge cannot be discounted. Legitimate favorites, all, but let’s be serious about this. None are THE best. 

A Christmas Carol is first and foremost a ghost story; a horror tale that, properly presented, chills the blood as much as it warms the cockles of the heart. It is also a commentary on the depraved heartlessness of unrestrained capitalism, and it is the combination of all these aspects that makes the version starring Alastair Sim far and away the best interpretation ever captured on celluloid.

I will fight you on this.

I have to admit that the 1962 telefilm, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, is my personal favorite and has been since I was a small child, but no, it is not the best. The acme, the absolute pinnacle of cinematic scroogismus, is the 1951 British film, Scrooge. 

Firstly, it’s in glorious black & white. I know we have entire generations suffering under the delusion that movies must be in color, but color is the enemy of filmcraft in so many ways. There is no special effect so overused as color. 

You simply cannot create the required deep shadows and existential angst needed to tell this story perfectly without high contrast blacks and whites. With them, Scrooge drips with nigh unto film noir levels of expressionism. I’ve never seen a color version that truly brought out the painful darkness of Scrooge’s soul, and this interpretation does it better than any other black & white version. It benefits greatly from being made in the midst of the Age of Noir, drawing heavily upon the stylistic and thematic tropes of that genre. Until the moment of Scrooge’s redemption, just as is the case of George Bailey in that other great holiday film noir, It’s a Wonderful Life, the object of the narrative is a lost and desperate man, sunken into a despair that is palpable. The tragedy here is that it is of his own making and that he knows it.

Sim shows this better than any other actor. His wonderfully expressive eyes and staccato yet graceful physical reactions show that the Scrooge he was at the beginning of that Christmas Eve wasn’t gratuitously mean or cruel. He was a deeply wounded man, disappointed in the turns he felt compelled to take along his pathway to wealth. Sim’s Scrooge isn’t a villain. He’s a victim of his own designs. Sim plays that so much better than any other movie Scrooge. And I’ve seen damn near all of them.

The kicker for me is the scene at the end of the Spirit of Christmas Present’s time when he opens his robes and shows the twin children of hopelessness, both society’s and Scrooge’s:

“This boy is Ignorance, this girl is Want,” he tells the nearly repentant miser. “Beware them both, but most of all, beware this boy!”

“But have they no refuge, no resource?” Scrooge asks.

The Spirit throws Scrooge’s words from early in the story back at him: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”

Bam! With that, he accuses Scrooge, and us, of depraved indifference to the suffering of our fellow beings. Following that indictment, the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come seals the deal, and Ebenezer Scrooge awakens on Christmas Day fully “Woke”. 

There. I said, and I meant it. 

The supporting cast is also excellent, with Michael Hordern smarmily excellent as Marley. Mervyn Johns as Cratchett, Hermoine Baddeley as his good wife, and Ernest Thesiger as the undertaker are all outstanding, as is the rest of the stellar cast.

Scrooge is available on YouTube year-round, and will no doubt be shown on Turner Classics and other movie channels, or streaming all over the bandwidth, during the Christmas season. I urge the populace to indulge in its pleasures, and its agonies, wherever possible. You’ll thank me the longest day of your life.

Until we meet again, my Yuletide Yetis, as always, be afraid.

Be very afraid.

Horror Curated: Nightmare Fuel, Krampus

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I’m sure that everyone in the world is familiar with Santa Claus. He is the embodiment of the giving nature of the holidays. As some of you may also know from pop culture, there is an opposite to the jolly old elf. For this issue’s Nightmare Fuel, we look at the anti-Santa Claus, Krampus.

According to central European legend, Krampus is a half-goat and half-demon with a long tongue who carries a switch or whip and a basket on his back. He whips the wicked children, sometimes carrying them away in his basket for more punishment or to be eaten later.

Some depictions have him wearing lederhosen, but is usually naked except for his fur or wearing chains. Sometimes he accompanies Santa, other times he makes the run before him. One thing included in any description is how evil and scary the Christmas demon looks.

The roots of Krampus’ legend stretch back to 12th Century pagan celebrations in Germany and Austria…READ more Horror Curated NOW!

Horror Curated: The Ghost of Father Christmas by Dean Farnell

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The Ghost of Father Christmas by Dean Farnell

Santa Claus is just a ghost I’ve waited every year.

I stay up every Christmas Eve and shed a little tear.

He never comes to our house, I’d know if he had been.

I see him in my mind sometimes it must have been a dream.

The spirits placed my presents around the Christmas tree,

Or it’s my imagination playing tricks on me.

READ more Horror Curated NOW!

Free Fiction: The Surgeon of the Forest Floor by Ronnie L. Roberts II

A hike would clear his mind. 

The early Spring air released a bearable yet unsettling frigid feel as the strong breeze swept across the forest floor. Birds chatted in singsong tones while dead leaves shattered under Edward Canty’s worn-out boots. About a mile in and off the trail a clearing of trees revealed stumps in a large but otherwise empty plain. 

One tree remained.

The leaves on the tree were thin crepe sheet cuts, yet to wander off from the summer scorch. The tree, shorter than the surrounding others, remained dead, its leaves whistling and crackling, mimicking the sound of a smooth waterfall. The colors stuck out against the greenery beginning to emerge bottom-up throughout the forest. A short step ladder was flipped open and hidden behind its trunk. Edward walked off the trail through glossy spider webs and outstretched branches. The tree grabbed his attention, its branches flailing wondrously, almost calling to him. 

Scrap piles of rope collected in a scattered pattern underneath the tree. Its base was beginning to rot. The branches reached out just over Edward’s head as he stood in awe and reached for a leaf. He rubbed its surface between his index finger and thumb, carefully caressing it back and forth. 

The leaf was a crispy leather, rough like tree bark, and in some spots as smooth as a green leaf trading his touch with an oily substance sticking to his fingers. Various shades of leaves covered the branches of the tree. Some were light brown, dark brown, and multiple shades of tan. The leaves were tied to the tips of the branches secured by small ties of rope. The leaves danced with the force of the wind, singing in harmony with the crunch of death surrounding it. 

He placed the ladder close enough to reach one particular leaf. He extended his arm for the thicker and heavier one that was causing the tip of the branch to sag. A dark red liquid formed a droplet at the bottom edge. Edward pressed his trembling fingers on the leaf, instantly pulling them back. He studied the liquid. 

Stepping down the ladder, he wiped his hand on the cool forest floor. A distinct rust smell rushed up his nose. The wind continued to cut through the dead tree limbs, branches, and leaves, heaving them into a chiming whirlwind. Edward forced himself closer. One of the leaves had a design on it done in faded black ink. It was stretched and distorted. A tribal design, one you’d pick off the wall at a tattoo parlor. 

The wind died as Edward quickly backed down the ladder and turned around to make his way out of the forest. A thick tree stood straight ahead off the trail, hosting an entanglement of vines twirling themselves up and around its thick trunk. Edward came to a full stop.

A face peeked out from behind it.

It was missing an eye. It’s good one stared at him for a second. Its half-smile crept from behind its half-sewn mouth fastened with thick black string. Its long, white, greasy hair fell down like wet dangling seaweed. The face was neither male nor female. It was pale and eel-like, missing pigments of color riddled with gray splotches.  A fishbone of an arm emerged from behind the tree. It gripped a long scalpel.

Edward’s heart rate soared. The sun hovered high above the forest, warming the back of his head, pushing down on his chest. The face behind the thick tree swiveled like a snakehead towards the trail. The fishbone arms fully emerged pulling the rest of the thin-wiry frame along with it. A hiss spit from behind its sewn-shut lips. 

The thin cable-like limbs and pointed extremities unfolded from the body like a Swiss army knife, each yielding a different shape and jagged edge. The face smiled harder, ripping some of the stitches as a drool of blood crawled down the chin. 

“It bleeds,” The thing said, whispering, smiling, twisting, and turning. It moved like a glitch. Its head seemed to misbehave pulling in the opposite direction of its sharp and pointed body. 

The pale rail-thin figure of a human now stood still. Its motionless arms pulsed and flexed bright blue veins. The half-smile sagged to a frown. A drop of blood flowed from its missing eye.

The creature blinked and lifted his frown to a slight half-smile again. The thin slits on each side of its head pulsated. Its mouth peeled open releasing a mist of exploding energy. 

“Skin,” the thing said. Overweight and beyond petrified, Edward grasped at his meaty chest and released a shriek of pain. The thing studied him, scanning his body for the best cuts, the most robust slabs, the finest decorations for his next tree. Edward collapsed face-first on the dirt path. 

Years of food abuse and cigarettes mixed with sheer terror left him drooling and disordered on the forest floor. 

The thing glitched wildly over to his body, its legs striking the path like wild bolts of lightning. Edward silently endured the sting and pressure that came down on him. First, his forearms, and next his thighs. Then he could feel the agonizing pressure in his back. The thing flipped him over, tearing his shirt open with the razor-sharp scalpel. His stomach ballooned, pushing out and up at the thing. It was smooth and plump. After a few concentrated cuts and drags, the thing had what it wanted. It took only a few minutes for Edward to drop the weight his doctor had pressured him to lose for so long. 

He was now well over his goal. 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

R.L. Roberts II lives with his wife and two kids in Southern Maryland. He enjoys life in general! Mondays are better than Fridays and thinking outside the box is the key to happiness. Accept what is and keep moving forward. https://www.instagram.com/rl_roberts2/

Horror Curated: Nikolette Jones, Ornament Maker

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Horror Ornament Maker, Nikolette Jones

by Emerian Rich

Haunted ornament maker Nikolette Jones is an artist, illustrator, and educator who uses all sorts of media to create all sorts of art pieces that range from cute to scary. She alternates from making actual things like ornaments and bookmarks, to painting on massive canvases, to illustrating and designing book covers for various authors. Her day job is being a French immersion and art teacher. If it’s fun and creative, she’s all in.

I was introduced to Nikolette by a good friend (thanks Tim) who said we’d hit it off because we, “Have the same dark humor.” When I heard she was reimagining old dolls into undead babies and repurposing dollhouses into haunted houses, I knew I had to share her awesome work with you fine adorers of all that’s spooky and macabre.

Nikolette says she’s been a maker as far back as she can remember. “I was constantly reworking my toys or hoarding weird supplies to make more toys or scenes for my toys. This progressed and I added painting and drawing to the mix.  I honestly can’t remember a time where I wasn’t making something or thinking about making something.”

Her art is inspired by everything around her. Pop Culture, music, literature, the macabre, everyday life, and found objects, she always has a project going on in her head before they see the light of day.

“Lately I’ve been watching a lot of horror movies from the past and the present and have been inspired to mix my love for pop culture with my love for the scary and macabre to create interesting pieces.”  READ more Horror Curated NOW!

Book Review: Midnight in the Chapel of Love by Matthew R. Davis

Reviewed by Emerian Rich

For: Readers who enjoy real-life mysteries, music, and self-discovery. This is a slow-burn read with an amazing payoff.

Content warning: sexual content, drug use, some murder-spree description.

Jonny Trotter has spent the last fifteen years running from tragic memories of the country town where he grew up but the black envelopes pushed under his door won’t let him forget, and now that his father has died, he can run no more. Before he can move on to a future with his girlfriend, Jonny must first face the terrible truth of his past and if he can’t bring it out into the light at last, it might just pull him and everything he loves down into the dark, forever.

Midnight in the Chapel of Love is a slow-burn novel with an interesting payoff in the end. I wouldn’t call this a horror novel per se. It’s more of a mystery with horrifyingly dark paths. During a series of reveals, the reader will try to piece together all the strands of an intricate puzzle. Some lead to dangerous truths and others lead down broken routes with no way out.

Beginning with a glimpse into the past with a Natural Born Killers sort of murder spree, the story quickly switches focus to Jonno, an Aussie man going back to his hometown to attend his father’s funeral. Like most, he’s dealing with ghosts of his past in a town with enemies, friends, and lovers. But as the story weaves on, the reader gets a feeling maybe his secrets are a bit more dangerous than the average homecoming. Through his return home and a series of flashbacks to his youth, the love story between Jonno and his high school girlfriend, Jessica, unfolds as well as a possibly magical cave, the legend of a toxic love affair, envelopes from the grave, and haunted visions.

The love story between Jonno and Jessica is intoxicating. I’ll be honest, I am not a fan of the Natural Born Killers trope, so the first part could have killed it for me right there (no pun intended). I’m glad I stuck with this book long enough to get to Jonno and allow his story to grab me. There is a lot more to Jonno’s story than the love affair, but it’s integral and wild and really pulled me into the story.

Although the story centers on Jonno, it also unwinds a mystery town folk have been wondering about for years. Where is the Chapel? Does it really exist? Does it really test true love?  Has anyone lived to tell the truth about it? Or is it a death trap waiting to part lovers forever?

Is Jonno broken because of the strange occurrence that caused him to flee in the first place? Or did it start younger, with the death of his mom? What do his visions of a bloodthirsty Bonnie and Clyde have to do with his truth and will going home complete him or rip him to shreds?

While I enjoyed the book and found the ending quite something I wasn’t expecting, it is a slow burn and may not appeal to everyone. Be prepared for the long haul, as it unfolds in such a way that you’ll be in a quandary for much of the read. But if you like snapshots in time (late 90s) and alternative/new wave music (there’s a soundtrack in the back that’s to die for) you will enjoy living vicariously through the out-of-control, and uninhabited mind of Jessica. And if you like Jonno (or just like watching someone’s life implode) you’ll become invested pretty quickly.

Historian of Horror : Dead? and Buried

I have mentioned before that my wife and I enjoy traveling, both here at home and abroad. Our favorite American destination is the lovely, and very haunted, Savannah, Georgia. The time has come to share yet another of the many delights of that fabled city by the sea.

On our last excursion thence, we took a tour of Bonaventure Cemetery. Among the notables buried there is American song-writer par excellence Johnny Mercer and poet Conrad Aiken, whose childhood home is one of the most haunted in Savannah due to his father having murdered his mother and then killing himself when poor Conrad was just a lad. His daughter Joan wrote a number of ghost stories and supernatural novels, but as she spent her life in the United Kingdom, her estate preferred that she be buried on the other side of the Big Pond when she passed at the age of seventy-nine in 2004.

Oh, well. I guess another trip to Old Blighty is called for.

Well-heeled Savannahns have enjoyed eternal rest in Bonaventure since 1846, including 

one Charles F. Mills, whose tomb has all the bells and whistles. Literally. 

When Mills died in 1876, he had a grave alarm installed in case he needed to alert passers-by that he’d been buried alive. It is still in working condition, but Mills has yet to avail himself of its continued functionality.

We have spent time in the places of interment of other folks than the denizens of Savannah. During our 30th Anniversary tour of Eastern Europe in 2011, we arrived on an unprepossessing street in the lovely and very musical capital of Austria, Vienna. On our left was the house in which Ludwig van Beethoven gave his first public performance. On our right, the Cistercian monastery that was home to the final resting place of the Hapsburgs, the ruling family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from the early 17th Century until the collapse of the empire following the end of the First World War, die Kaisergruft.

The Imperial Crypt is filled with row upon row of elaborately decorated sarcophagi, each containing the remains of some royal or other. The most spectacular one houses Empress Maria Therese, mother of Marie Antoinette, and her husband. Unlike her daughter, she died with her head still attached.The final member of the imperial family born prior to the dissolution of the empire who was still alive during our time in Vienna passed away a few months later and was interred in the final available resting place within the Kaisergruft. Resquiat in Pace. 

For my wife’s sixtieth birthday celebration in 2017, we took a cruise around the Baltic Sea, from Copenhagen to St. Petersburg, with stops along the way in Helsinki, Finland; Tallinn, Estonia; Stockholm, Sweden; and a variety of historical and culturally significant places in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in northern Germany. On her actual birthday, we found ourselves being escorted around the region of Rostok, Germany by a gentleman who goes by the moniker of Taxi Harry, and if you are ever in those environs, I hope you are fortunate enough to find yourselves in his vehicle. He was even kind enough to compliment me on my very limited German.

One place he showed us was the Doberaner Münster (Doberan Abbey) in Bad Doberan. It was a Cistercian monastery for hundreds of years, and came fully equipped with a charnel house behind it into which the monks were placed upon their demise. No home should be without a bone silo in the backyard. I’m seriously considering installing one sometime in the next few years. Whatever will the neighbors think!

Just this past September, we traveled through Scotland and Ireland, including stops at the Culloden Battlefield, Loch Ness, the Robert Burns birthplace, The Giant’s Causeway, the Cliffs of Moher, the Guinness Brewery, and many other sites of interest. Our most recent visit to the eternal homes of the dead was on the Emerald Island at the burial place of the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Yeats is interred in the churchyard of St. Columba’s Church in Drumcliffe, County Sligo, in the shadow of Ben Bulben, where he wanted to be lain.

Is my Irish showing a bit too much there? So be it, for ‘tis Irish I am, and Irish I evermore shall be. Erin go bragh, O’Donnell Abu and cead mile failte!

I must note as our lagniappe for this edition the passing of comic book artist Vic Carrabotta, 93 years old, on November 22. He illustrated numerous horror stories for Marvel Comics’ predecessor, Atlas Comics, in the 1950s, including a story in the first issue of Journey into Mystery. R.I.P.

Until next time, my dear effendi of ectoplasm, I bid you all to be afraid.

Be very afraid.

Free Fiction : Hallowed Cliff By Dylan Thomas Lewis

The archway stood firm under the shroud of night, its heart spelled in dripping letters: Hallowed Cliff Cemetery. He could still discern the entrance atop the sodden hill despite the starless sky, through the rain and sweeping winds. The image had been blistered into his unconscious. He marched on through the marshy soil as if he could rid himself of it by way of physical exertion, or perhaps cleanse his spirit with heaven’s baptismal waters. He dared not stop for fear of sinking through the earth and residing himself to an unceremonious yet eternal tomb. Though the world would not make it easy. Several times he lost his footing and slid upon the mud before slamming the shovel head into the ground and forcing himself up, carrying on with stubborn consternation. 

He wiped the muck on his pants as he passed under the arch and trudged forward among the aisles. Over the fresh and dying roses, the pink and purple larkspurs. Past endless processions of graves. Stones of granite. Stones of marble. Sandstone and slate. Some brandishing themselves to the eye, almost arrogant in their novelty. Others having been neglected for centuries, their texts gone as if washed away by Mother Nature for some unutterable slight against her. He eyed the years as he went, capricious, interchangeable; like philosophical tauntings from beyond, calling to him, demanding he decipher their unanswerable ponderings. 

The shovel struck into the ground as he removed a pewter flask from the inside of his shirt, then took a swig and stepped to the grave before him. He looked upon the head with bloodshot eyes, compelled to take in the marking over and over again by the light of Zeus and Selene; inconstant; uncertain. 

Eva Meridian Mara

February 21st, 1981 — July 8th, 2021

A Mother 

A Friend

A Person

Rest in Peace

Could’ve thought of better. 

He drank, then replaced the flask and stepped to the grave opposite. He unbuckled his belt and pissed into the sloshy soil. 

“Apologies, miss — errr — mister.”

He flicked his member clean and redid the front of his jeans, then took the shovel in hand and returned to the opposite grave. With a last look at the stone, he stabbed the shovelhead into the mud and lifted a mound of green and black muck from the earth, tossing it to the side and splattering little balls on the opposing marker. Shovelful after shovelful. Foot after foot. He spent an hour laboring deeper and deeper into the earth, stopping at several points to pour water from his shoes. Finally, he was done, breath unsteady, a salty sweat amongst the rain on his brow. 

A great hole sat before him, four by eight in dimension with a depth of six feet, the lid of a dark red casket peeking out the bottom. He lowered himself in and dug along the side until he found the latch. A light hiss escaped as he undid it, like a snake warning him from its burrow. It drew his thoughts toward the darkness within. Toward the all-knowing nothing entrapping the poor soul inside. It struck him with what he felt was an unnatural reverence. A connection and understanding unique to him and him alone. 

He’d always found an allure to such things. A morbid, yet uncompromising curiousness for the shadows — of both sight and mind. For the implications they presented. The universal and contradictory lessons that fed him without frame left him frozen in place, unable to comprehend what lay before him, regardless of what his conscious mind would admit. The horror. The humor. The eternal void just below the surface of all. 

He lifted the lid by a foot and shined his phone inside. He saw an arm veiled by a wispy white dress, stiff and pale like a cheap manikin. Spitting onto the earth wall opposite, he slid his phone in and let the lid drop, removing the flask and downing what remained. He washed what mud he could from his hands, limbs, and torso, then rubbed his hands across his face and put his head back to run them through his hair. With a final breath, he gave a glance toward the waning moon in the east and crawled inside.

He set the still shining phone on the cadaver’s stomach and burrowed his way next to it, snuggling close with his arm under the neck. His hands grasped the rigor, the penetrating cold. His eyes traced up and down the ghostly vessel. He imagined her origins, physical and ethereal. Tried to unweave the mysteries and intricacies of her being as well as those who’ve come before and will come long after. The marks of his existence and what it all amounted to. The incalculable sum rendered indistinguishable from its antecedents. 

Rubbing his fingers across her cheek, he stared at the unflinching eyelids, decorated with red and black eyeshadow. At the plush raven hair, the light reflecting off it like stars in the vacuum of space, ever-expanding, shifting further and further away. His body began to shake. He smashed his eyes shut and swallowed the snot creeping down the back of his throat. Tears of regret leaked onto his cheeks. A great breath entered his lungs and returned as if unsure of the vitality of its own purpose. 

He reopened his gaze to the eyelids. He reached with trembling hands and placed them directly under. He moved to lift the lids from their perch, but shot back upon touch, reeling as if scorched by some invisible spark. His head hung, he cried harder than he’d ever done. His eyes, half drowned in tears, stared past the light into the darkness and beyond. It stared back. He clutched the body close, burying his head into the bosom as his weeps filled the tomb, echoing back into his shattered sense of self. 

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Dylan Thomas Lewis was born in Kirksville, Missouri. He graduated from Central Methodist University after serving as co-editor of Inscape magazine for two years. He writes short stories, screenplays, and music; and is the guitarist for the Electronic Rock band Secular Era.

Horror Curated: Have a Haunted, Jolly Christmas

NOW AVAILABLE!
Issue #1: Haunted Holidays

Have a Haunted, Jolly Christmas

by Mark Orr

I’d be amazed if there is anyone reading this expository essay who is unfamiliar with the 1843 Charles Dickens novella, A Christmas Carol. The classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and that memorable Christmas Eve when he was visited by a series of ectoplasmic entities in order to adjust his attitude toward a more compassionate perspective has permeated the culture, having been adapted to stage, screen, radio, television, and other media hundreds of times over the past almost one hundred and eighty years since publication. It is by far the ghost story of any kind that has been the most adapted, with the runner-up, Aleksandr Pushkins’ “Queen of Hearts,” coming across the finish line as a distant second.

While I am resolute in my insistence that the best film version is the 1951 production starring Alastair Sim, I have to say that my favorite is, even after sixty years, the first one I saw—Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.  The very first animated Christmas special, it aired on NBC in 1962, and for many years afterwards. I still sing along with all the songs whenever I watch it. The Christmas pleasures of one’s childhood never quite lose their sparkle. Christmas is all about watching Mr. Magoo as Scrooge and imbibing numerous tall glasses of homemade eggnog heavily laced with intoxicating liquors for this Auld Phart at Christmas time. And yeah, the grandchildren, of course. Sure, them, too.

One might think that Mr. Dickens would have been satisfied with a single great and grand Christmas ghost story. One would be mistaken. Legendary British anthologist and editor Peter Haining’s 1992 collection, Charles Dickens’ Christmas Ghost Stories, contains no fewer than ten, including the aforementioned novella. Nor was Dickens alone in his fervor to link the Holy Ghost with more earthly spirits. Once he opened the floodgates, the entire Victorian spooky story writing community jumped all over the notion as if it were a loose football in the end zone. To list them all would eat up my allotted word count pretty quickly. READ more Horror Curated NOW!

Review : Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiousities / Episodes 1 & 2

Review by R L Merrill

Greetings Horror Addicts! I feel like this spooky season has been packed chock-a-block full of excellent horror offerings. I am nearly done with The Midnight Club, I fiendishly binged The Watcher, and I’m completely enamored of Interview With The Vampire, which I’m on my second viewing at this time. But there was one series I knew I could get my non-horror-tolerating husband to watch, and I’m excited to share my reactions with you. 

Like most fans of Guillermo Del Toro, I was anxious to check out Netflix’s Cabinet of Curiosities. There are eight episodes, which are all introduced by the man himself, and I’ll be posting reviews of them here on the blog. The episodes are directed by folks he handpicked, they seem to all be period pieces spanning the past 150 years, and two are from his original stories. The collection has a Twilight Zone vibe—if directed by Sam Raimi. The actors are folks you’ve seen before, including some beloved actors like F. Murray Abraham, Crispin Glover, and Andrew Lincoln, and the characters are put through the proverbial ringer in each episode. The cinematography and attention to minute details is unbelievably well done. No corners were cut for this limited series. 

Lot 36, starring Tim Blake Nelson, explores the world of storage unit auctions. If you’ve ever seen this phenomenon—bidders are shown the unit briefly, then they are asked to pay, sometimes thousands, for who knows what—you know you’ve always wondered just what hell might be hidden behind old dressers and gaudy lamps. In this episode, you find out just what hell can be lurking in the darkness. This episode also teaches you that karma is real and will keep you locked in with the baddy when you scoff at its power.

I thought Stephen King’s Graveyard Shift, both the story and the film, had made me terrified of rats. Uh uh. Graveyard Rats introduces us to the world of grave robbing, which in this case is done as an inside job by a habitual gambler named Masson. This episode had me simultaneously thinking genius and holy shit, don’t ever bury your loved ones with valuables. Including their gold teeth. Shudder. Masson discovers a horrific world under the cemetery where huge rats are chewing through coffins and dragging the freshly buried bodies deep into the bowels of the earth. Being the desperate man he is, he follows. Definite trigger warning if you have issues with tight spaces. Or rats. Or…well, you get the picture. Also by episode two, you’ll realize that nudity is a part of the series in bizarre and disturbing ways. Just saying.

I’ll be back with the next two episodes, and I’d love to hear from folks who have watched. What did you think? Which stories were your favorites? Stay Tuned For More…

 

Spooky Locations: Big Ridge State Park, Maynardville Tennessee by J. S. O’connor

It’s getting cold outside and if you are looking for one last outdoor excursion, you might want to skip Big Ridge State Park in Tennessee – or just the Ghost Trail, Indian Rock Trail, and Old Mill Trail. 

Big Ridge State Park is a 3,687-acre park near the Appalachian Ridge, full of heavily forested areas, beautiful campsites, and miles of hiking trails. 

One trail called the Ghost Trail is a 1.2-mile loop with a few sinister legends. The first is that of the Hutchinson family home and cemetery. One such story is that of Mary, the daughter of the Hutchinson family. It’s said that in the mid-1800s, Mary died of tuberculosis and her screams still echo from her room in the Hutchinson home. There are also stories of people hearing the sound of a panting dog charging in their direction near the house. Other stories are of Matson Hutchinson, the father of Mary, still walking through the woods in search of something.

And of course, there is the Norton Cemetery, which is said to be haunted. People claim to have captured dark, sinister figures while taking pictures near the cemetery.  

There are also reports of Indian Rock Trail and Old Mill Trail being haunted as well. Indian Rock Trail is the spot where a man named Peter Graves was ambushed and scalped by Native Americans. It’s said that he still walks around the area. Old Mill Trail is said to be haunted by a young girl who was hung by her father after being accused of witchcraft.

If you were to decide to venture off the trail, be warned that you may meet a middle-aged man who simply appears and vanishes without a word.

Big Ridge State Park is a beautiful park, no doubt filled with some great trails and camping spots. But behind everything beautiful, there is always something ugly. In this case, it is a few trails that are witness to some horrific events. 

Guest Blog : Finding the Holiday Spirit at the Winchester Mystery House by Megan Starrak

In San Jose, California, there is a mansion with a spooky history. It is the infamous Winchester Mystery House. It was built by Sarah Winchester, who was married to William Wirt Winchester. He was the heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. After his untimely death in 1881, Sarah inherited a fortune and 50% of business ownership. Soon after William’s death, she visited a medium and was reportedly able to contact her late husband. The advice her husband gave her was to move to California and build a house for the spirits of those killed by Winchester-brand guns. 

She followed this recommendation and bought a small farmhouse in San Jose in 1884, and the building began. Construction would continue 24 hours a day until Sarah died in 1922. By then, the house had grown into a seven-story mansion with 161 rooms. Other statistics on the place are that it contains 10,000 panes of glass, 47 fireplaces, and an unknown number of ghosts. 

The house is open year-round to the public. But for those who want to get into the holiday spirit, the house transforms into a Victorian Christmas showcase from late November until early January. One unique tour that will be given during the 2022 holiday season on December 3rd, 10th, and 17th at 5:30 is the Holidays with the Historian Tour. Led by historian Janan Boehme, it is a two-hour tour through the house with a focus on Victorian holiday traditions, caroling, and a special snack in the dining room. Guests participating in this tour are encouraged to dress in Victorian attire for their visit. 

Another event at the Winchester Mystery House on the weekend of December 3rd and 4th is the 4th Annual Menagerie Holiday Oddities & Curiosities Market. Over the weekend, vendors will sell unusual collectibles, antiques, and handmade items. So, if you or anyone on your Christmas list are a fan of taxidermy, medical specimens, or dark artworks and live near San Jose, you should make plans to attend. 

The Winchester Mystery House is an excellent attraction for those interested in the paranormal or life in the Victorian era. But for holiday season enthusiasts, it offers many special tours and events to bring the holiday spirit to life.