This story happens by lamplight, under a copse of trees and at the top of a steep hill, predictably under the cover of night when only the most nefarious deeds are done. It's October and the ground is frosted, but there are men at work with spades and shovels, digging into the soil with some ardour, awaiting that telltale sound of metal striking a coffin. If you've ever dug up a grave yourself, I'm certain you'd know it: the timber of the strike changes as the wood buckles, and then splinters. It's an extra bit of give beneath the tool -- the result of the grav[...]
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MidnightSocietyKira
1 Short on time? Day job grinding you down? Trying to find two minutes to take a pee break? I know the feeling. Crazy work weeks make for very little time to dose myself with the dark stuff. Some of my favorite things when life gets hectic are short, compacted horror stories and films. Six words stories? Cool. I'm down. Short films that are under twenty minutes to watch? Even better. I've collected a few recent finds to share with you today, and yes, I'm keeping my blather brief. Short Horror Films The Smiling Man You might've seen the other Smiling Man video in c[...]
Being possessed of a transient heart, I can whittle my bucket list into something that generally revolves around travel and experience. This is only ironic inasmuch as I am fond of staying home on my couch, until I'm not: until I've crammed a week's worth of clothes into a backpack and hopped on a plane to go adventuring -- to see what I ordinarily wouldn't see. I'm in the planning stage of another two trips -- three if you factor in DragonCon 2017. Two of those adventures are taking me back across the pond to Europe, venturing a little deeper into the land whe[...]
In the summer of 1816, a group of artists, poets, and friends gathered together at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva in Swizerland. Sounds quaint enough. So here’s the dirt, and I’m paraphrasing liberally from a couple of different sources: Mary Shelly’s step-sister, Claire Clairmont, had the idea: she was hooking up with Lord Byron and even though he wasn’t really feeling it, she decided to “surprise” him in Swizerland though he never really invited her along for the trip. With her, Claire brought Mary and her main squeeze, Percy, along for kicks. Pe[...]
It’s sometime after ten and we’re standing in front of Old Yard holding an eighteenth-century lantern replica with a tin roof, holds slotted into it to let the heat escape. We’re dangling it over the wall that separates the parking lot from the cemetery. The candlelight reflects off a small slabbed tombstone — isolated from the rest of the graves without any real indication why. It could be a dissenter’s plot. I run over the number of reasons why someone might be buried as a dissenter in 19th century Stowe: usual reasons include not adhering to the popul[...]
Hello fellow horror fans. Today we're visiting the deep end of the swimming pool. Let's shimmy up to the edge, our toes curling around the lip of cement that separates us from the water, and peer down into the murk and what lingers there. It's been some time since I've tried to put one of these posts together, and there's a good reason for that. Let's call it the separation of church and state; art and presentation; craft and identity. I'm at DragonCon this weekend, surrounded by a hoard of seventy thousand like-minded individuals who are, cumulatively, wilder a[...]
Back again this month with more j-horror films to trigger latent fears of technology: video cassette tapes, cell phones, cameras, the internet... nothing is sacred. Nothing is safe. Sure, we're accustomed to haunted houses -- that's old hat -- but a possessed eyeball?! Okay, okay... so maybe not so much a possessed eyeball, but at least an organ that let's you see into the spirit world. One of the most fun conventions of j-horror is that it often uses everyday objects and turns them into vessels for terror. The films in this list, excepting Godzilla, all cater[...]
Everyone's got their thing: for some people it's slasher movies, for others it's creepy-looking revenge spirits. I fall into the latter category. Given that it's j-horror month, I'd like to celebrate by re-introducing a few of my favourite horror movies that deal with yurei. Even if you've never heard the word "yurei" before, you'd probably know one if you saw one: the white shoudlike dress, the long, matted black hair, and the penchant for indiscriminately killing anything and everything they come in contact with after a certain amount of time. It's a very parti[...]
New stuff! Shenanigans! Weird things! Welcome to the fourth instalment of Curious Things Found on the Internet. We're taking it eclectic this week, and curating a mishmash of different things from various areas, and different parts of the world. Cat funerals! Tiny coffins! The hotel from Stephen King's The Shining! Hell yes. Let's have some fun, and get those inspirational juices flowing. Curious Things Found on the Internet - Part IV Edinburgh’s Mysterious Miniature Coffins "The “fairy coffins” discovered on Arthur’s Seat, a hill above Edinb[...]
It's February, which for the better part of the population means the month of Valentine's Day (why a whole month for that, I dunno. Consumer holiday? I'm celebrating, so I shouldn't talk.) But for a chunk of the horror-appreciating demographic, it's also a month-long celebration of Women in the Horror industry. To commemorate that bad girls of dark fiction, a few women who kickass at the dark stuff, I've collected a few of my favourite blogs who focus on writing horror, reading horror, and watching horror films. If you visit the Women in Horror Month website,[...]