Blog-o-ween 2023: Stephen King

We did it, Blog-o-weeners! We made it! Today is the day! October 31st. Halloween...or Hallowe’en if you’re into apostrophes...and if you’re into apostrophes, may I recommend a Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2, lines 132-134? Or maybe a Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2, line 5? They’re quite fresh today. Okay, I see you’re a discerning customer. For you, a special — two MacBeths for the price of one —  I’ll give ya an Act 1, Scene 5, lines 30-31 and toss in an Act 2, Scene 1, lines 33-35 for nothing! I’m losing out on this deal! My kids are the ones going hungry, but anything to make you happy!

No matter what you call it — Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Eve, or the Festival of Samhain (I see ya back there, Mr. Cochran) — it’s a special day, and you’ve probably got a lot going on. If you have kids, you’re getting them into their costumes and then taking them out trick-or-treating. And, please, keep a close eye on them, so they don’t go running out into traffic. We don’t want another Ben Tramer incident, do we? Not on my watch!

If you don’t have kids...well, then, you’re dressing yourself up and taking yourself out trick-or-treating and hoping to pass as an eight-year-old.

And you will have deserved that rock! Honestly, trying to take Charleston Chews and Mounds bars out of the mouths of needy children. You oughta be ashamed!

You’re busy. We here at LARPCo understand. So in the interest of time, let’s just jump right into today’s post. Now, after spending the previous thirty days reading all sorts of horror-flavored stories, how could the ultimate Blog-o-ween 2023 post top all that’s come before it? Well, it’s simple really. We gotta go with the King—

No, not Jack Skellington the Pumpkin King. The other King...

As welcome as King Paimon would be to today’s festivities, I’m actually thinking of Steph—

GAH! NO! Talk about your horrible monsters!

No, kiddies. We’re talking the reigning champeen of all things horror, the undisputed king of calamity, the prince of putrescence, the prime minister of all things sinister, the duke of oil (slicks that eat people while they try to go for a nice swim in a peaceful lake). Today, we’re talking about Maine’s favorite son, Stephen King.

Now, when an author has been as prolific as King has, how do you choose just one or two stories to discuss? I mean, the guy has published over eighty books of fiction and non-fiction, novels and short stories. Add to that nearly twenty screenplays and teleplays. Add to all THAT a yarn called "The Plant," an epistolary story that King wrote in lieu of Christmas cards in the early- to mid-Eighties. In short, the man has a mighty stack of stories to choose from. No matter what stories we here at LARPing Real Life pick, I’m sure that we will disappoint someone.

C’est la guerre!

For this last entry of Blog-o-ween 2023, I thought we would stick to a single collection of Stephen King short stories. It’s a book whose cover has haunted me nearly my entire life. Back in the 1970s and 80s, whenever I’d accompany my mother to the Northern Lights Shopping Center in Baden, Pennsylvania, I would always search out the newsstand in whatever store we happened to be in — Hills department store, Thrift Drug, Kroger’s, and my personal favorite, The Book End. I'd plant myself in front of the shelves and pore through all the issues of Mad, Cracked, and Crazy I could find. I think ol' Stevie would back me up on my reading choices.

Standing like sentinals next to the woodem magazine shelves were wire racks filled with mass market paperbacks of all genres — westerns, romance, sci-fi. However, anyone familiar with Grady Hendrix’s fond overview of that era, Paperbacks from Hell, knows that it was the covers to the horror books that always captured the eye. In more ways than one.

This is my copy of Stephen King’s 1978 short story collection Night Shift. Looks rather staid, no? Sure, that’s how it gets you! It looks all safe and nondescript until you pick it up and turn over the cover to reveal what’s hidden underneath.

It was covers like this that charmed readers back then...charmed ‘em like a cobra extending its hood and beginning to sway back and forth, back and forth. Those eyes in the folds of that hand...man, talk about nightmare fuel. I honestly feel bad for people whose first introduction to Night Shift was this cover:

C’mon, man...that’s just weak. I wouldn’t give that book another look on the wire rack. When it comes to horror, you gotta judge a book by its cover. I think publishing has forgotten that maxim.

Ah! Stop looking at me!

So now that we have that book in our grubby little hands, which of the twenty stories are we going to talk about today? We are spoiled for choice, I must admit. There’s “Jerusalem’s Lot,” the sorta related/not really related precursor to King’s 1975 vampires-in-America novel, ‘Salem’s Lot. (Which, if you know anything about me, you know that I read every year in October. I'll be finishing my umpteenth read of ‘Salem’s Lot  tonight. I've paced myself well and have saved the Fearless Vampire Killers' final battle with Barlow just for Halloween.) Or how about “Night Surf,” that creepy story that takes place in the same universe as The Stand? Maybe “Sometimes They Come Back” King’s tale of undead greasers from the Fifties come back for vengeance?

All winners, in my opinion. You couldn’t go wrong by reading any of them, but my picks for Halloween are on, shall we say, the gooier side of things. Oh, we shall, we shall! Put your hip waders on, kiddies, cuz we’re goin’ in!

“I Am the Doorway” was first published in the March 1971 issue of Cavalier, a magazine that was started in the early 1950s by Fawcett Publications to be a showcase for its Gold Medal authors like Henry Kuttner and Mickey Spillane. By the time King’s story showed up in its pages, Cavalier was a “gentlemen’s magazine” in the vein (pun intended...heh-heh-heh!) of Playboy. And like Playboy, the men who bought Cavalier did so solely for the articles and stories like the following...

“‘You are the doorway,’ Richard repeated thoughtfully. ‘You are sure you killed the boy — you didn’t just dream it?’

“‘I didn’t dream it. And I didn’t kill him, either — I told you that. They did. I am the doorway.’”

Our narrator, Arthur, and his buddy Richard are sitting on Arthur’s porch looking out at the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Arthur, a former astronaut, is telling his good friend a horrible story that began with his flight to Venus. While orbiting that planet, Arthur was exposed to an alien force. His ship crash lands back on earth, and his co-pilot is killed. Arthur is hospitalized, and his recuperation takes years. After his release, he begins to complain of horrible itching in his hands. Soon thereafter, the first eyes begin to sprout on his fingers...

What happened to the boy when he saw the eyes? What's gonna happen to Richard when he sees them? Whose eyes are they? Who sees through them, and what does Earth look like to them? And how are they using Arthur as a doorway?

Our next story, “Gray Matter,” was also published in the pages of Cavalier, fittingly back in October of 1973. Maybe you want to run to the kitchen and grab a cold one before we start in on this one? I’d hate for you to get a monstrous thirst you couldn’t quench in the middle of it...

“Now the door opened again, letting in a blast of the cold gray air outside, and a young kid came in, stamping snow off his boots. I placed him after a second. He as Richie Grenadine’s kid, and he looked like he’d just kissed the wrong end of the baby. His Adam’s apple was going up and down and his face was the color of an old oilcloth.

“‘Mr. Parmalee,” he says to Henry, his eyeballs rolling around in his head like ball bearings, ‘you got to come. You got to take him his beer and come. I can’t stand to go back there. I’m scared.’

“‘Now slow down,’ Henry says, taking off his white butcher’s apron and coming around the counter. ‘What’s the matter? Your dad been on a drunk?’

“...‘He’s been on a drunk,’ the boy was saying now, ‘but that ain’t the trouble. It’s...it’s...oh, Lord, it’s awful!’”

At a local convenience store in Bangor, Maine, during a heavy snowfall, a young boy enters looking scared for his life. The boy has been sent to pick up a case of beer for his dad. Only, he refuses to take the beer back with him. He tells one of the men in the store, Henry, his story. Henry comes out and picks up the beer and tells a few of the other men to follow him. He’s going back to the Grenadine’s home, and if what the boy told him is even partial true, then the gun he’s packing will come in handy.

On the way there, Henry tells the others what the boy told him.

“The kid said it must have been the beer — you know how you can get a bad can every now and again. Flat or smelly or green as the peestains in an Irishman’s underwear. A fella once told me that all it takes is a tiny hole to let in bacteria that’ll do some damn strange things. The hole can be so small that the beer won’t hardly dribble out, but the bacteria can get in. And beer’s good food for some of those bugs.”

Yes, beer is good food, but what if some of those little bugs grow up to be big bugs? Will beer be enough to satisfy it then? What was it that was in that can that Richie Grenadine drank? And what has become of Richie that is so bad that his own son won’t return to his house? Does it have to do with the dead, decaying cat that the son saw his father eat? Maybe...maybe...

Anyway, drink up! We’ve got one more story. Our final story for Blog-o-ween 2023. This one takes place not in the autumn of the year like a proper Halloween story should but in the spring. It’s a special spring, however, one that comes around every so often. It brings a thick fog when it returns...a real killer fog. Heh-heh-heh!

“Strawberry Spring” was first published in the Fall 1968 edition of the University of Maine’s literary journal, Ubris. Later, like so many of the other tales in Night Shift, it made its way to the pages of Cavalier in 1975.

It’s March 1976 and a ‘Strawberry Spring’ has moved into New England, covering the campus of New Sharon College in a thick, impenetrable fog. Much like an “Indian Summer” is a period of unseasonably warm weather in the fall, a strawberry spring is a cold snap at the beginning of spring, a brief return of winter. The weather outside, and the words “Springheel Jack” in the newspapers sends the memories of our unnamed narrator back eight years before. A time when another strawberry spring held sway and when the horrific killings of a murderer the media dubbed “Springheel Jack” held the college in the grips of a panic. The narrator recounts the sheer terror of those days as campus officials, police officers, and students were unable to stop the murders from happening. Springheel Jack was never caught, and now, eight years later, he’s returned with the fog.

Why is the narrator so unnerved by the news that the killer is back? What do his headaches and the gaps in his memory have to do with Springhell Jack?

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, in September of 1947. His father, Donald King, left the family, leaving King’s mother, Nellie, to raise Stephen and his older brother, David, by herself. They moved many times during King’s childhood: Illinois, New York, Wisconsin, Indiana, Connecticut. When King was eleven, the family settled in Maine.

One day, King and his brother were playing when Stephen found an old box of paperback books in the attic. They were the remnants of his father’s belongings. The box was filled with old Avon paperbacks, one of which was a collection of H.P. Lovecraft tales called The Lurking Fear and Other Stories. King would always say that it wa that book that started him on the road of horror.

As a school boy, King wrote stories based on movies he’s seen and sold them to fellow students. In 1966, King started classes at the University of Maine at Orono. There he met his future wife, Tabitha Spruce. He graduated in 1970; his daughter was born later that year; he and Tabitha wed in 1971.

The story of King’s rise to become America’s (if not the world’s) premier horror writer is well documented. As was mentioned above, his list of credits is too long to go into here. Suffice it to say that if you want to read or listen to the stories that we’ve talked about today, then you can find them at your local library. If your local library doesn’t have any King on its shelves...RUN! Honestly, I think that is a sign from the universe that you have entered into The Twilight Zone or something.

“Strawberry Spring” was turned into an audio drama podcast back in 2021. Its eight episodes take place at the time of the story — 1960s and 1970s — but it greatly expands on the story’s action. It is very well acted by Syndey Sweeney, Garrett Hedlund, Milo Ventimiglia, Ken Marino, and Herizen F. Guardiola, and its sound design is exquisite. Check it out here!

Well...that’s it. That’s all she wrote. We’ve made it through another Blog-o-ween. This is our fourth annual month-long blogging slog through October, if you can believe it. (I can’t!) I think this year’s Blog-o-ween was the best one yet! Thank you to everyone who dropped by and read what I had to say. I hope it entertained you. I also hope that you found books and writers that could become new favorites. That’s really what all this is about for me: sharing my love of storytelling with folks. So, I hope you pick up a few of the books mentioned this month and read them and share them with others. That way it’s not just me...and it’s not just you...but it’s EVERYONE having...pleasant dreams? Hmmmm? Heh-heh-heh!

Oh, one more thing...

Blog-o-ween 2023: Daphne du Maurier

Can you believe it, Blog-o-weeners? It is 30 October. We are on the cusp of the big day — not to mention the Big Giveaway during the Horrorthon. I wonder what Conal Cochran is giving away this year? It must be something B-I-G, because look how excited Dr. Challis is getting.

We here at LARPing Real Life are wishing you the luck of the Irish this year. We’re pulling for ya, Doc.

While the good doctor is keeping the phone lines (not to mention his local barkeep) busy, let’s you and me settle down for an evening of quiet horror. The three stories we have on tap for today are tales of creeping dread told in the calm, cool style that only British writers seem capable of mustering. Writers like M.R. James, Marjorie Bowen, and Robert Aickman (just to name a very, very few) never allow the out-of-this-world, weird nature of the action in their stories to influence the measured, reasonable tones of their storytelling. There are very few exclamation points in the work of these types of writers, which makes the appearance of the outré even stranger and more disquieting.

The stories we are focusing on today are all from the typewriter of Daphne du Maurier. (Although there are some rumors that some of her work passed through the pens of other writers first — more on that later.) Best known for the 1938 Gothic novel Rebecca, du Maurier also penned several short stories that are darker, more ambiguous, and more shocking than her more romance-oriented novels. Two of today’s three stories have been adapted into major motion pictures, and the third feels as though it would have been ripe for an adaptation of The Twilight Zone. So without further ado, let’s you and I head out to the southwestern tip of England, to County Cornwall, and see what Dame Daphne is up to and where her quiet horror takes us...

For our first story, “The Blue Lenses,” du Maurier takes us to a hospital in London where Marda West is recuperating after an operation to restore her sight. She lies in bed with her eyes wrapped in gauze. The voices of all the nurses and doctors passing through her room assure her that the operation was a success and that her bandages will soon come off. When they do, her doctor tells her that everything will be tinted blue because she has been fitted with temporary blue lenses that will help her eyes adjust to seeing light and shapes and whatnot. After this brief adjustment period, the lenses will be removed and she will see everything perfectly fine.

Ain’t medical science a miracle, dear reader?

The day comes when Marda has her bandages taken off and she gets to see for the first time. She is not prepared for what is revealed to her:

“Smiling, she saw the figure dressed in uniform come into the room, bearing a tray, her glass of milk upon it. Yet, incongruous, absurd, the head with the uniformed cap was not a woman's head at all. The thing bearing down on her was a cow...a cow on a woman's body. The frilled cap was perched upon the wide horns. The eyes were large and gentle, but cow's eyes, the nostrils broad and humid, and the way she stood there, breathing, was the way a cow stood placidly in pasture, taking the day as it came, content, unmoved.”

“‘Feeling a bit strange?’

“The laugh was a woman’ laugh, a nurse’s laugh, Nurse Brand’s laugh...She shut her eyes, then opened them again. The cow in the nurse’s uniform was with her still.”

Uh-oh.

More people come and go. All have animal heads. Some are cats, some snakes, others dogs. Her husband has the head of a vulture. Is Mrs. West dreaming? Hallucinating? Is it the blue lenses? And what will the world look like when they are removed? Find out by listening to the story as read by Nightmare Diary below:

Incongruous animals are at the heart of our next story, “The Birds,” which, aside from Rebecca, is perhaps the most famous story du Maurier wrote.

On a farm on the coast of Cornwall, disabled war veteran Nat Hocken, notices large flocks of birds behaving strangely. He chalks their restlessness up to their intuitive knowledge that winter is coming. That night, Nat’s house and family is attacked by dozens of robins, finches and other small birds.

The next morning, on a walk to the beach, Nat sees whitecaps on all the incoming waves. Soon, he discovers that what he is seeing is not foaming water but thousands upon thousands of gulls. While the BBC announces that birds have attacked people across the country, they do not quite comprehend the seriousness of the situation. Nat does, and he begins boarding up his cottage against further attacks.

The days pass and the attacks become more frequent and more dangerous. Hiding in their house, Nat and his family hear the sounds of naval guns firing and of planes flying above them. Soon, the bombardment, like the radio, goes silent.

What has happened beyond the walls of the cottage? Why are the birds attacking? Will it ever end? Does humanity stand a chance? Listen to Tony Walker read “The Birds” over at his Classic Ghost Stories Podcast to find out:

Our last story, “Don’t Look Now,” was, like “The Birds,” made into a motion picture. Most people who know the tale will picture Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in the lead roles and have a preternatural fear of red raincoats. That’s justifiable. No matter how familiar one is with the movie, however, the original story still has the power to delight and terrify.

After the sudden death of their daughter from meningitis, John and Laura take a trip to Venice, Italy, in an attempt to put some actual, as well as emotional, distance between them and their grief. One night, John catches sight of a small figure in a pixie-hooded cloak. It appears to be a girl running away from some danger. While out for dinner, John and Laura meet a set of middle-aged twin sisters, one of whom may blind, but has second-sight. She tells John that what he saw was a vision of his daughter trying to warn him that he is in danger if he remains in Venice. It seems that Venice has been plagued by a series of murders recently.

A telegram comes informing John and Laura that their son, who is staying at a prep school back in England, has fallen ill. Laura agrees to fly back as soon as possible, leaving John behind to take care of getting their car on a special train running from from Milan to Calais. Long after Laura should have been on her plane home, John sees her in a water taxi with the two sisters. He chases after the trio, but cannot find out where they went. While searching for her, he sees the pixie-hooded girl running through the streets again, this time pursued by a man. The murderer, John assumes. He gives chase, determined to save the girl.

Does he reach her in time? Why was Laura on the water when she should have been in the air? Does John also have the gift of second sight as the old woman said? If so, what is the small figure running through the streets trying to tell him? Tony Walker reads “Don’t Look Now” for his Classic Ghost Story Podcast below:

Daphne du Maurier was born in London, England, in May of 1907. Her father was the actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and her mother was the actress Muriel Beaumont. While she grew up in Hampstead, London, she spent her summers at the family home in Fowey, Cornwall. In 1932, she married Frederick Browning, who was known as the “father of the British Airbourne Forces” and was also an Olympic bobsledder(!), and became Lady Browning after he was knighted in 1946. Later, after being made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969, her full title was Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, DBE. But she remained plain old Daphne thereafter, as she never used the title.

Though seemingly happily married and the mother of three children, du Maurier held an interesting view of her own sexuality. She claimed that her personality was made up a feminine side — the wife and mother roles she projected to the world at large — and a masculine side that she kept hidden from view. This “male energy,” she said, was the source of her writing. This dichotomy, according to her biographer Margaret Forster, was never truly resolved, and du Maurier allegedly remained in denial of her own bisexuality.

Du Maurier’s writing career began by having some early stories published in her great uncle Comyns’s magazine Bystander. In 1931, she had her first novel, The Loving Spirit, published. In 1938, Rebecca was published and became an immediate hit. However, shortly after Rebecca hit bookstores in Brazil, critics and readers noticed many similarities in plot and specific situations between it and a 1934 novel by Brazilian writer Carolina Nabuco, A Sucessora (The Successor). Though du Maurier and her publisher claimed no prior knowledge of Nabuco’s book, it must be pointed out that when Nabuco had her novel translated into French and published in France, the publisher that she sent it to in Paris was also du Maurier’s publisher.

Did du Maurier see Nabuco’s book, read it, and inadvertently absorb its story? It’s hard to say for sure, but the fact that this wasn’t the only time that du Maurier would be accused of plagiarism does muddy the waters a bit. Author Frank Baker thought there was something funny going on when du Maurier’s short story “The Birds” came out in 1952. The something funny was that Baker had published a novel in 1936 about millions of birds attacking the people of London. His book’s title? The Birds.

Oops!

It doesn’t help quell public opinion that du Maurier worked as a reader for Peter Llewelyn Davies, Baker’s publisher, at the time he submitted his manuscript.

Double oops!

I’m not here to accuse or exonerate anyone of anything. I just report on the news, I don’t make it. I do feel, however, that if one is burning with indignation over du Maurier’s supposed literary offenses, one should take a look at Jonathan Lethan’s 2007 Harper’s Magazine essay “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism.” In it, Lethem suggests that everything from inadvertent copying to outright stealing is the norm of literature and has been since the dawn of (written) time. It’s an interesting article made even more interesting by the fact that everything in it has been cut-and-pasted from other sources. The art of literature, it seems, is much like the art of architecture: the importance is in how the bricks are stacked and not where one found them in the first place.

It’s time to say good-bye, Blog-o-weeners. We’ve had a great time here on the coast of Cornwall, but we don’t want to overstay our welcome. What’s that? Why, yes, that does seem like an unusually large flock of birds in the sky. I don’t think it means anything sinister. They’re just migrating to warmer climes. Maybe we’ll see them when we get back to Italy? In the meantime, snuggle up against me, close your eyes, and have...pleasant dreams? Hmmmm? Heh-heh-heh?

Blog-o-ween 2023: H.P. Lovecraft

We are getting closer and closer, Blog-o-weeners. Halloween is so close you can almost taste the Charleston Chews and Necco Wafers. Or maybe that’s just the pumpkin spice talking. Studies indicate that ingestion of five or more grams of nutmeg causes acute nutmeg poisoning, which includes giddiness, hallucinations, and feelings of depersonalization. Now, there’s science for ya. Always taking the fun outta things. Why, I’ve been chugging pumpkin spice lattes with extra nutmeg the whole time I’ve been writing this and nothing weird has happened yet.

See! It’s business as usual here at LARPing Real Life! Anyone wanna do the William Tell routine with me?!

Speaking of freaky hallucinations, let’s jump right into today’s Blog-o-ween 2023 entry. We’ve got four stories from a writer who lived and died in genteel poverty eighty years ago, but who has gone on to become one of the most influential artists in the horror and science-fiction genres. Indeed, it seems strange to say that twenty-first century horror owes a large debt to an early twentieth century pulp fiction Anglophile who styled himself after 19th century writers and who wished he'd lived in 18th century, pre-Revolution America. Yet, here we are, and here is H.P. Lovecraft with his ideas about “cosmic horror” and elder gods from beyond time and space and black magic being indistinguishable from science and all that stuff that horror fans eat up across all media: movies, music, comic books, board games, video games, role-playing games, etc.

Any discussion of H.P. Lovecraft and his influence today, however, needs to address the elephant-sized Old One in the room: Lovecraft, the man, was not very nice. And that’s putting it mildly. Name a race, a gender, a sexual orientation, a national origin, attach the suffix “-phobe” to the end, and you’d have a pretty accurate description of Lovecraft. His depictions of African-Americans are disgusting. His portrayal of Eastern Europeans and Asians would put World War One and World War Two propaganda posters to shame. His monsters are thinly veiled (if they are veiled at all) stand-ins for everything that terrified white Americans in the early-20th century.

Yet there’s something about Lovecraft's work, his description of the creatures from “outside” our world, and our petty human understanding of them that inexplicably draws people to them. Everyone — be they black, white, gay, straight, men, women, and every point on the spectrum these terms try to define — everyone, it seems, finds something in Lovecraft that they can use in their own work and in their own way. For instance, HBO’s series Lovecraft Country, Victor LaValle’s novel The Ballad of Black Tom, and Chris Spivey’s Harlem Unbound (an excellent sourcebook for the RPG Call of Cthulhu), are all works by black artists about the black experience that use Lovecraft’s world, but not his worldview.

Perhaps one of the ways in which people find a way into Lovecraft’s work is via his overarching sense of “cosmic horror.” The opening paragraph of today’s first short story, “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926), serves as a good definition of what that terms meant for him:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

How’s that for an opening, huh?

“The Call of Cthulhu” is told in three parts by a man named Francis Thurston, a Bostonian who is investigating the recent death of his great-uncle Professor Angell in Providence, Rhode Island. The professor’s notes suggest an ancient cult is at work in the world.

The first part of the story, “The Horror in Clay,” tells of a mysterious bas-relief created by local sculptor, Henry Wilcox, in 1925. Wilcox complained of dreams and visions at the time, as did many other local artists in New England.

Wilcox’s creation is similar to a figurine described in the next section, “The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.” Here, the good inspector crashes an archaeological society's symposium and shares his story of a raid on a religious sect in the swamps of Louisiana. Among the items recovered was a figurine supposed to depict the ancient god Cthulhu.

The last section, “The Madness from the Sea,” purports to be the story of a Norwegian sailor, Gustaf Johansen. The sailor tells of the discovery of a hitherto undiscovered island in the South Pacific. There, the laws of geometry and physics do not apply. On that island the men of the ship Emma found an ancient city, and in the middle of that city sat an immense building with a pair of large doors. The doors were opened and out stepped...

You’ll just have to listen to HorrorBabble’s reading of it below to find out for yourself what the sailors discovered behind the doors.

Next up is “The Colour out of Space.” Written in 1927, it is a story told by an unnamed narrator about his attempts to discover the truth behind an area in the hills west of Arkham, Massachusetts. This part of the wild country is known to the locals as the “blasted heath”,and is shunned by everyone. One local, a farmer by the name of Ammi Pierce, tells the narrator the story of Nahum Gardner and a meteorite that fell to earth near his farm in 1882. The meteorite wasn’t just a simple piece of space debris, however. It brought with it something that begins to affect the forest around Gardner’s farm, the crops in his fields, and, finally, Gardner and his family.

What is it that fell from the sky? Why do the scientists that examine it claim that it emits a strange color when it falls outside of the range of anything in the visible spectrum? What are the changes brought upon Gardner and his farm?

Again, HorrorBabble offers an excellent rendition of Lovecraft's story below.

Let’s head over to jolly olde England now and visit the De La Poer family at Exham Priory. They’re a fun bunch, but I hear they’ve been having a problem with rodents.

Written in 1923 and first published the following year in the pages of Weird Tales, “The Rats in the Walls” is the story of an American named Delapore. He’s just come into his family’s ancestral estate. While restoring the old homestead, Delapore hears the scurrying of rats behind the walls. Upon further investigation, Delapore not only learns of a secret passage leading to an underground complex, but he also learns the truth of his family’s history. Like the Sawyers in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Part 2, it seems that Delapore’s family has always been in meat.

Guess what? That's right! Our good friends over at HorrorBabble have an audio version available below.

Our last story is possibly my favorite of the bunch. Like “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Dunwich Horror” (1929) combines scientific jargon, occult rituals, back fence gossip, and factual reporting into a cohesive, dread-drenched story of cosmic horror.

“The Dunwich Horror” takes place in Massachusetts not far from Arkham and its seat of higher learning, Miskatonic University. A family in the backwoods, the Whateleys, have a dark history of necromancy and black magic. Something strange came into the world with the birth of Wilbur Whateley, and it is up to Miskatonic’s librarian, Dr. Henry Armitage, to make sure that whatever it is is sent back from whence it came.

Just what is Wilbur keeping in the old farmhouse? What do the Whateleys need so many cattle — and where do they keep them? Why does Wilbur need Miskatonic’s copy of that ancient text, the Necronomicon?

You can find out by listening to this excellent adaptation by the old time radio show Suspense from 1945. It stars Academy Award winner Ronald Colman in the role of Dr. Armitage.

That’s it for today, Blog-o-weeners. I hope that after reading today’s selections you don’t become too pessimistic and feel that all is for naught. Sure, we may live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, but that doesn’t mean that, come nightfall, we can’t enjoy...pleasant dreams? Hmmmm? Heh-heh-heh!

Blog-o-ween 2023: Edgar Allan Poe

It’s 28 October. It’s getting late in the day, kiddies. The last handfuls of sand are beginning to trickle through the neck of our hourglass. There doesn’t seem to be enough time to talk about all the stories that we here at LARPing Real Life still have on our agenda for Blog-o-ween 2023. So, let’s stop fooling about and get down to the nitty and the gritty...

Nooooo...that’s Al Capone’s enforcer, Frank Nitti, and the other fellow (the one on the right) is the mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers (and known hell demon), Gritty. Nice try, though.

Anywho...we’ve got six stories on deck today for Blog-o-ween. SIX! What better way to celebrate Halloween than with the stories of everyone’s favorite emo kid, Edgar Allan Poe? Eddie was definitely one of America’s earliest adherents to the maxim “Everyday is Halloween.” Unfortunately, he was also a lover of the adage “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.” So, let’s raise a glass to Edgar and jump right into the festivities without any further ado...

First up is a story about a gated community whose residents think they are above things like the plague and death. Why worry about getting vaccinated and masking up when you can party like it’s 1399? Let’s see how the other half dies in “The Masque of the Red Death.”

Prince Prospero is throwing a kegger for all his bros (and a few hoes) at his castle. They aren’t so much celebrating as they are just simply waiting out the plague that is ravaging the country. “The Red Death,” as it is known, has swept across the land, causing sharp pains, sudden dizziness, and profuse bleeding at the pores before finally dispatching its victims. Prospero and his friends hope that their wealth and status, along with the walls of their enclave, will protect them. I think the uninvited guest to the prince’s masquerade ball — the one who is tastelessly dressed in a dark, blood-spattered funeral shroud — will have something to say about that. And I don’t think Prospero and his guest will want to hear it.

Next, we have the old, familiar story of one guy and two girls. Classic lover’s triangle, amirite? In this case, however, one of the ladies is dead and...well, actually, both of the ladies are dead in this one. Maybe this isn’t as familiar a tale as I thought. Let’s take a look at the story of “Ligeia” and learn more...

Our narrator has found the love of his life in the Lady Ligeia. She is intelligent and beautiful, with dark eyes and raven-hair. She is also something of a metaphysician. During their brief marriage she begins to introduce her husband to the wonders of forbidden wisdom.

Heh-heh-heh!

But soon, however, Ligeia becomes ill and dies. Don’t worry for our dear narrator. He replaces Ligeia with the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena. And when I say “he replaces her,” I mean...well...you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

Our next tale is another old, familiar yarn about love and...dental work? It’s a story with a lot of bite, and one that you can really sink your teeth into. Heh-heh-heh! Let’s read on about young Egaeus and his love for his cousin “Berenice” and her smile.

Egaeus and Berenice grow up in a gloomy castle. (Is there any other kind?) She has an unnamed degenerative illness, which causes her to fall into a kind of catalepsy, and he suffers from a monomania that forces him to fixate on objects. So far, this sounds like a goth version of “The Gift of the Magi.”

As Berenice’s illness ravages the rest of her body, it leaves her teeth looking healthy (and with a pleasant mint flavor, too, I’m sure). Egaeus becomes obsessed with those pearly whites. Berenice dies and is interred. Egaeus sits and thinks about those teeth...about holding those teeth in his fingers...Berenice’s beautiful teeth...Berenice who is buried not too far away...

Them with dentophobia should look away at this point.

Our fourth story is all about mesmerism. It was all the rage in Europe and America when Poe wrote this story in 1845. Sure, making a subject cluck like a chicken is loads of fun, but could hypnosis be a cure for death? Let’s find out by looking at “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.”

Ernest Valdemar is dying of tuberculosis. His friend, the narrator, is interested in mesmerism and wants to experiment on Valdemar to see if the (psuedo)science of putting a dying subject into a hypnagogic state can affect the process of death. Valdemar agrees and is soon put under. He dies while in the hypnotic state. As any friend would do under the circumstance, the narrator keeps Valdemar in his trance for over six months. When it comes time to wake Valdemar and release him (and his spirit)...well let’s just say that it gives new meaning to the term “morning breath.”

You still with us? Because we’ve got two tales left. And, boy are they doozies!

Our fifth tale is, perhaps, my favorite of Poe’s stories. Its central image — of a person buried behind a wall — has been used by many makers of Italian “giallo” films, including Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, and Dario Argento (who directed a direct adaptation of it). You may be thinking of a certain Montresor who tricks his “friend” Fortunato into accompanying him into the catacombs to have a sip of a very special wine, but I’m not talking about “The Cask of Amontillado.” The story of murder and burial that we’re going to read next is “The Black Cat.”

Our narrator is a happily married man who loves his wife and all animals, especially his black cat, Pluto. Unfortunately, like Poe himself, the narrator also has an unnatural love of alcohol, which causes him to become violent. One night, while chasing the cat with an ax, the man’s wife comes between him and his prey. He buries the ax in her head, then proceeds to bury her body in the wall of the cellar. After he’s done, he cannot find the cat, which is fine so far as he is concerned. The police come sniffing around to search the house. They find nothing...except the preternatural howls of a cat...and it sounds like it is coming from behind one of the basement walls!

Bob Villa and Norm Abram never had this problem.

Okay, Blog-o-weeners, we’ve come to the end of today’s entry. One more story, and I will stop bending your ear. This story is probably Poe’s most famous creation. It is (at the time of this writing) being used as the basis for a certain streaming service’s multi-episodic series. It’s been made by avant-garde filmmakers in France and given the low-budget, high-concept treatment by Roger Corman. It is another tale of isolation, madness, and premature burial. It’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

Another unnamed narrator (this guy gets around!) visits his old friend Roderick Usher. Usher wrote to his friend asking him to come and help him pass the time because of an illness he is suffering from. The narrator arrives to find his friend and his sister, Madeline, living in a dilapidated house next to a tarn. The house has a thin crack on its front that stretches from the roof to the ground.

During the narrator’s visit, Madeline dies from an unknown disease, but because she also suffered from cataleptic trances, her body will be interred in the family tomb for two weeks before it is permanently buried. (As you do.)

A week later, a storm rages outside, and as Roderick reads aloud the story of a knight named Ethelred who battles a dragon. During the reading of the story, the narrator and Roderick hear the sounds of cracking and ripping coming from somewhere in the house. Soon, a loud banging is heard, and the door is blown inwards to reveal...

Well, you should really find out for yourself what comes into Roderick’s bedroom and what becomes of the house of Usher.

What can we say about Edgar Allan Poe that hasn't already been drilled into our heads during a junior high English class? He was born in Boston in January, 1809, and he died in Baltimore in October, 1849. In between, E.A. Poe lived a life with as many ups and downs as an Otis elevator, albeit the downs outnumbered the ups by a conservative 4-to-1 margin.

Even in death, the poor man couldn't catch a break. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, an editor, critic, and anthologist, bore Poe a grudge. The tension between the two men stemmed from Poe's attack on Griswold's critical acumen in his 1842 book The Poets and Poetry of America. Later, Griswold replaced Poe as co-editor at Graham's Magazine at a higher salary, something Poe could not stomach. Somehow, even through all this antagonism and aggrievement, Griswold was named Poe's literary executor upon his death, and he used this position to spread lies and destroy Poe's reputation.

Thankfully, Griswold failed at his attempt at literary assassination. Due to the diligence of people who knew Poe well, as well as French critics and writers like Charles Baudelaire, Poe's reputation remained intact, and in fact only grew as the years passed.

Whew! That’s all for today, kiddies. And what a day! So many great stories to accompany you to bed. I just hope that Uncle Edgar’s stories don’t scare you to death. But not to worry. We won’t permanently bury you until we are absolutely sure you’re dead. We’ll give you the old mirror-under-the-nose check and the needles-in-between-the-toes test. We are nothing if not scientific and thorough. In the meantime, we’ll place you in the family tomb deep in the catacombs beneath the castle. There, you’ll be stretched out on a bier in the dark. And if you aren’t really dead, well, at least you’ll have a quiet place to rest and to relax and to have...pleasant dreams? Hmmmm? Heh-heh-heh!