As we come upon another session of Camp NaNoWriMo, I can't help but look back on all the projects I've worked on during these spring & summer writing retreats. My story ideas can come from anywhere. Strange snippets of conversation, weird news articles I read online, not to mention local places and faces that inspire. So, during my first attempt at writing a novel-in-a-month, I searched around for images to inspire one of my favorite places to set a story: the Creepy Small Town. Enter Ontario Abandoned Places, an online database of user-submitted photos o[...]
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legends
3 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[...]
It's folklore and legends week in our month long #SocietyScreams horror bash! So I offer a tale...a true tale. Although less well-known than The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, this story of ghosts and death will soon spread across the world. The Legend of The Midnight Society Three days after joining The Midnight Society, you die. Death comes in strange ways. Sometimes the form of your worst fear, other times when you are immersed in what you love. Reenacting a scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Don’t use a real stake. Your spirit animal,[...]
When we discuss folklore, the stuff of legends particular to certain areas, we're not always discussing the story itself -- we talk about the hype that surrounds it; makes it bigger than it probably is. The fact is, a lot of the pop culture we get our hands on today lies roots in stories that were told a couple of centuries ago. I can't say that this suggests that there's no original horror stories anymore, far from it; it's interesting, however, that the origin points for the things we find scary now might actually have kernels of truth to them because they're so[...]
Argentinians take their folklore seriously. And rightfully they should. According to legend, the seventh son born to a family is cursed to become a werewolf who feasts on the bodies of unbaptized babies. Yep. I'd take that pretty seriously too. But they take things to a whole 'nother level in Argentina. In fact, their president gets involved. In order to thwart the curse, there is a long-standing tradition where the leader of the country legally adopts any seventh born son. This way, the son is no longer technically part of their original family, and no longer co[...]
I remember when I was young and my mother used to say to me at Christmas time, “If you aren’t good, you’ll be getting a bag of switches and ashes instead of candy.” Of course, I was always good. As time passed and I became older I realized that our Americanized Santa Claus had his roots in a much older St. Nicholas. What I didn’t know at the time was that St. Nicholas had a counterpart, a monstrous creature called Krampus who gave new meaning to the words in a common Christmas song, Santa Claus is coming to Town. Some of the lyrics are: [...]
Yep, you read that right. According to this very extensive article from The Daily Mail, an amateur sleuth, an expert in DNA and genetics, and 7 years of exhaustive work have cracked the case that has baffled detectives and historians for over a century. If you're a die-hard CSI junkie, you HAVE to read this article. But for those who want the short version (but how can you call yourselves horror fans, and not read the article about Jack the Ripper?!?!?!), here it is... You might have watched the movie 'From Hell' with Johnny Depp: And maybe you've pictured thi[...]
With camping season upon us, I've been trolling the internet for various campfire-worthy spooky stories. We like to pack up our gear and head to the nearest body of water on the long weekends -- take a dip, lounge on the beach, swim out to the docks. There's nothing like a still black lake in the wilderness to inspire a fright -- especially when you can't see two feet below you in the water. It's easy to imagine the brush of seaweed as reaching fingers, straining to grasp your ankles and pull you down below. Love it. I'm a huge fan of monsters, so today, I've u[...]
Saint-Petersburg is a city with a unique and oftentimes macabre history. It’s one of the “younger” Russian cities, founded in the eighteenth century (compared to Moscow, for example, which is more than 800 years old). It was built to be the new capital, then stripped of the title and re-baptized after the October Revolution in the early 20th century. It was one of the cities to suffer the most under a long and grueling siege during World War II. These days, the city regained its original name (after its founder the Tsar Peter I), but legends still suggest[...]
