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Post by Phalon on Oct 5, 2022 5:15:02 GMT -6
It's October already - the fifth day of October! No need to prod the Imp - she's the one who's been prodding me (and none too gently!) to get started on the 31 Days of Halloween.
"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead." ~ from "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson (1916 - 1965)
Shirley Jackson was an American horror and mystery writer. I've read a couple of what are considered her best works: "The Haunting of Hill House" (required reading in high-school English Lit), and "The Lottery", a short story which I think I posted here in a past 31 Days of Halloween. I came across the "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" paragraph in one of those "the best opening paragraphs ever written" articles. "We Have Always Lived in the Castle", a gothic mystery, is the last book Jackson wrote before she died, and it's considered her masterpiece. I've never even heard of it. Now I want to read it.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 8, 2022 5:14:09 GMT -6
I love, love, love vintage photographs. But images from days gone by - stripped of their context - often appear creepy as hell by today's standards. And what is more ghoulish than a clown smiling at you with its fake grease-painted on smile? Unintentional creepiness? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Here's a look back at "unintentionally" creepy clowns: www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/slideshow/Vintage-creepy-clown-photos-95007.php
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Post by Phalon on Oct 20, 2022 5:15:55 GMT -6
“Take the fresh, unspotted cadaver of a redheaded man (because in them the blood is thinner and the flesh hence more excellent) aged about twenty-four, who has been executed and died a violent death. Let the corpse lie one day and night in the sun and moon—but the weather must be good. Cut the flesh in pieces and sprinkle it with myrrh and just a little aloe. Then soak it in spirits of wine for several days, hang it up for 6 or 10 hours, soak it again in spirits of wine, then let the pieces dry in dry air in a shady spot. Thus they will be similar to smoked meat, and will not stink.”Sounds like a recipe for a Witches Brew....or something the Imp might whip up after a night on the town, doing I-don't-want-to-know-what. But it's neither. It's a "recipe" used to cure who-knows-what from a 17th-century medical volume written by a German physician. "Corpse Medicine" was widely practiced in European countries, even into the late 1800s! Body parts of the dead (the more violent the death, the better) where used to treat various ailments of the living. Here's a gruesomely interesting article about the history of "Corpse Medicine": www.atlasobscura.com/articles/corpse-medicine
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Post by Phalon on Nov 1, 2022 5:25:17 GMT -6
I totally dropped the ball on this year's 31 Days of Halloween, though I read some pretty creepy stuff drilling subjects I never got around to posting. BP though, on Sunday, reminded me of something I came across when I was cruising the internet, looking for creepiness. A series of texts from her Sunday morning: "I took your soul." "I've got your soul." "LMAO." "Your soul." "Ugh." Me: "Uhm...okay. Are YOU okay?" Her: "I have your SOIL." She came by the house on Saturday while I was at work, and took a bag of potting soil that was in the shed to re-pot some of her houseplants. Her mistyping the word "soil" made for some unintentional creepiness. But kids, especially the little ones, do say some creepy-@ss sh!t: www.boredpanda.com/darkest-things-kids-said/?utm_source=search.yahoo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=organic
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 1, 2022 12:49:26 GMT -6
When my nephew was around three, he told several of us that he was going to take a knife and stab his sister to death with it. I told him that if he did that, she would go to heaven, and he would go to hell. He never brought it up again. No idea where he got that. I figured older kids must have been telling him stories he was too young to hear.
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