BoingBoing recently asked commenters to suggest the creepiest passage in literature (Cormac McCarthy and Iain Banks both rank highly), and one mention was this passage from “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas” by M.R. James:

Well, I felt to the right, and my fingers touched something curved, that felt — yes — more or less like leather; dampish it was, and evidently part of a heavy, full thing. There was nothing, I must say, to alarm one. I grew bolder, and putting both hands in as well as I could, I pulled it to me, and it came. It was heavy, but moved more easily than I had expected. As I pulled it towards the entrance, my left elbow knocked over and extinguished the candle. I got the thing fairly in front of the mouth and began drawing it out. Just then Brown gave a sharp ejaculation and ran quickly up the steps with the lantern. He will tell you why in a moment. Startled as I was, I looked round after him, and saw him stand for a minute at the top and then walk away a few yards. Then I heard him call softly, “All right, sir,” and went on pulling out the great bag, in complete darkness. It hung for an instant on the edge of the hole, then slipped forward on to my chest, and put its arms round my neck.

…which, yeah.

The author’s name didn’t seem familiar, but someone else mentioned the “face of crumpled linen” from another of his stories, which definitely rang a bell. I have indeed encountered him before, and you might have too. Montague Rhodes James was an English medieval scholar, but is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are considered to be amongst the best in the genre. His plots tend to reflect his antiquarian interests, in that the discovery of an old book or other ancient object is the catalyst for evil, and is thus regarded as the originator of the “antiquarian ghost story.”

His four collections, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, More Ghost Stories, A Thin Ghost and Others, and A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories are still in print, which is rather astonishing given that the latest one was first published in 1925. They’re available in a number of editions (his collected stories, Volume I and Volume II, or the Kindle M.R. James Megapack are good choices), but since they’ve long been in the public domain they’re also available online at Wikisource.

They’re a wonderful read, redolent of dusty libraries and dank crypts, and you can definitely see where James influenced later authors. Many of his stories were originally written to tell around the hearth on Christmas Eve, and reading them aloud to friends on a stormy evening still sounds like an excellent way to enjoy them.

It could be argued that Andrea of Cupookie has too much time on her hands. Because her blog is full of insanely-detailed cookies like this calavera gingerbread man, cookies whose decorations would make mere mortals cringe in terror at the thought of trying to replicate them.

They sure are awesome-looking, though.

Best of all, every other entry seems to be somehow spook-related; she’s got some lovely (and perhaps even do-able by us mere mortals) pumpkin spice sugar cookies, all kinds of Halloween cookies, magical fairies, girly skulls, and even some redecorated Hello Kitty skeletons.

She’s also got some interesting posts about things like cookies which resemble rocks, which opens up some possibilities in Halloween-party treats.

Mainly, though, you’re going to run into her brush embroidery cookies or the henna-inspired ones and be entirely boggled by the amount of detail work that went into them. Browse her site at the risk of feeling very inadequate in the cookie-decorating department.

There was a discussion over at Halloween Forum recently regarding the best way to make snaky Medusa hair–apparently pipe cleaners wrapped around strands of hair don’t work so well–and user HalloweenEve posted the photo above, along with this explanation:

A few years later I found a better solution – I bought cheap plastic snakes at the $1 store (a few dozen in a pack), wire, a double banded headband, and a can of gold spray paint. I wired the snakes into a great little tiara and then sprayed the whole thing gold and I really loved how it turned out.

I gotta say, this looks pretty awesome. In addition to using it as part of a costume, it’s really nice enough to wear as a dramatic piece of jewelry.

Instead of wrapping the wire around the outside of the snakes, it could be inserted into them lengthwise. This would not only hide the wire, it would allow the snakes to be bent into interesting configurations. Adjusting some of them so that they were more horizontal and then arranging one’s hair over them so that their heads poked out would make them look more “natural.” The tiara itself could also be embellished with fake jewels or perhaps silk ivy leaves for a Greek-ier look.

The execution could hardly be cheaper or simpler, and the results are really great.

It’s a little-known fact that Disneyland maintains a private, highly exclusive, club at the park in New Orleans Square. It’s called Club 33 (its “official” address is 33 Royal Street) and amongst many other perks, members are sometimes invited to after-hours special events.

One such event was “The Ghostly Retreat,” honoring Disney animator Marc Davis’ 100th birthday. It was a banquet inside the Haunted Mansion attraction, and all stops were pulled out. Disney food blogger Heather attended, and has posted her photos and description of the evening.

A few of the high points were a banquet table with plates, goblets, and tablecloth replicating the “haunted” one in the attraction’s dining room; some splendidly gothic flower arrangements; a menu themed to the stretching portraits in the entrace area’s elevator; and an insanely over-the-top dessert featuring a clear-sugar “crystal ball” with Madame Leota’s face screened on a piece of chocolate inside (complete with spun-sugar hair).

This is an absolutely splendid source of inspiration for both food and party decorations. Obviously, few of us have the wherewithal to pull off something this elaborate at home (if you do, will you adopt me?) but a lot of the basic ideas could be adapted into something more reasonable. In particular, the menu is as much the description as it is the actual food; one of the courses, for instance, was, “A Tall Tale,” described as, “Constance Hatchaway’s Hatchet Severed Chateaubriand Adoringly Adorned by Desiccated Rose Crystals & Mournfully Accompanied by a Tormented Hightower of Terror All Restlessly Resting on a Bed of Freshly Mortal Morsels.” Which is just a really fancy way of saying, “meat and potatoes.”

And, of course, keep the place settings and flower arrangements in mind in case you’re ever in an antique shop and come across the perfect piece. I’m going to be on the lookout for one of those candelabra/vase things.

(via BoingBoing)

You may have seen this “eyeball mouth”, since it recently went viral (it’s the tear duct on the side that really sells this). It turns out that this is not a one-off, but instead is the work of Swedish artist Sandra Holmbom and she’s got lots more where that came from.

Her blog is a treasure trove of great ideas, for both dramatic “every day” makeup and fairly hideous special effects. She has tutorials for a number of designs, and even the ones with no instructions have enough closeup photographs to make replicating them possible. Some of them are surprisingly simple (like the googly-eye nails; others would definitely take time and patience, but the finished look is a-ma-zing. I particularly like her “hazardous” eye makeup and the puzzle lips; the metallic lips are nicely steampunky, too.

More special-effecty stuff includes bullet wounds, exposed muscles, and the surprisingly off-putting moustache-where-the-lips-should-be. Particularly impressive is that she’s self-taught and doesn’t even work with makeup for a living; this is just something she does for fun in her spare time.

A lot of her older posts are in Swedish, but the most recent few months also have an English translation. She’s been blogging prolifically since 2008, so there’s a satisfying number of old posts to dig through. If you’re looking for makeup inspiration, be sure to check this out.

As long as we’re trundling along recommending things like books and movies and whatnot, I may as well continue the trend and suggest some Webcomics that y’all might find appealing. Or not. They amuse me, anyway. (Comics with an asterisk have additional text if you mouse over the image.)

Please feel free to make your own suggestions in the comments!

Para Abnormal – Splendidly dark-and-goofy single panel comic.
Sample Comic

Hijinks Ensue* – “Geeking for the sake of geekery.”
Sample Comic

Indexed* – Humor by way of charts, graphs, and similar infographics.
Sample Comic

A Softer World* – Rather than illustrations, this comic is comprised of photographs with odd, often dark, text.
Sample Comic

Liō – Pantomime strip involving the adventures of a little boy for whom weird, dark, supernatural stuff is loads of fun.
Sample Comic

Oglaf!* – NSFW. The setting is kind of a quasi-D&D milieu, with the occasional monster and barbarian warrior and whatnot. Mostly hilariously dirty. Some storylines are multi-page, so keep an eye on the navigation.
Sample Comic

Basic Instructions – “How-to” advice, amusingly illustrated.
Sample Comic

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Whilst digging around in the depths of my computer the other day, I ran across the file below. It dates from my AOL-hosting days and I think it had something to do with a Halloween special feature they were doing; beyond that I have no idea where it came from or why I still have it. It’s pretty neat, though; a discussion of Medieval poisons that was apparently posted to an SCA newsgroup (remember newsgroups?) in 1994. Here it is, unedited except for minor formatting (and giving me all sorts of nostalgic feels; I haven’t thought about FidoNet in years).

From: Gunnora.Hallakarva@f555.n387.z1.fidonet.org (Gunnora Hallakarva)
Date: 29 Aug 94 02:56:00 -0500
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: 01 medieval poisons
Organization: Fidonet: Cygnus IIN/San Antonio
TX/HST+V32T+VFC+V34/210-641-2064

Good gentles… over the course of past weeks, I have noticed the many letters on poisons in period. For your information _only_ I present my research into the subject…

The Viking Answer Lady, aka Gunnora Hallakarva

THE SILENT WEAPON
Poisons and Antidotes in the Middle Ages

There are many substances readily available that will kill. Usually “poison” is used to refer to a substance which destroys the health or life of a living being by reason of its chemical constitution, and usually a poison will kill in very small quantities. Poison was usually classed with medicaments in the Middle Ages, and was numbered “in the fourth degree of medicament, wherein the destruction or death of tissue is produced.”[1]

The Greeks attributed the discovery of poisonous plants to Hecate, the goddess of sorcery. The Assyrians knew of both vegetable and mineral poisons as long as 3000 years ago. The ninth century Arabs brought poisoning to an art form (not a remarkable feat, when one considers the highly spiced foods that are consumed in the Near and Middle East, all the better to hide noxious substances in!). Galen, Dioscorides and Nicander provided the Classical world with descriptions of poisons, their actions and treatment. These writings were then preserved and enlarged upon by Muslim physicians such as Ibn Wahshiya in his _Book on Poisons_ or the Rabbi Moses Maimonides’s _Treatise on Poisons and their Antidotes_.

Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago I asked this site’s readers to suggest books that they thought other readers might enjoy. Intrepid commenter Cookie came up with several, then asked:

***Can we do movies and music too sometime? Please?!!?****

A capital idea.

Feel free to suggest either or both. Here are a few from me:

For movies, assuming that you’ve already seen the obvious ones like Poltergeist (still my single favorite horror movie) and The Exorcist (one of the few perks of living in the DC area is being close to the Exorcist steps), let me recommend The Uninvited–the 1944 version, not any of the remakes or similarly-titled dreck–a wonderfully atmospheric ghost story, Constantine (yeah, Keanu Reeves, but also Tilda Swinton), and Alien, still the classic SF/horror hybrid. Oh, and also Blade Runner, just because.

For music, I have no this-song-will-change-your-life recommendations, so I just hit Shuffle on my iPod and listed the first ten songs that came up (feel free to do the same):

Birdhouse in Your Soul (They Might Be Giants)
London Calling (The Clash)
Robots (Flight of the Conchords)
I’m Afraid of Americans (David Bowie)
Strangelove (Depeche Mode)
Code Monkey (Jonathan Coulton)
The Ghosts That Haunt Me (Crash Test Dummies)
Mowgli’s Road (Marina and the Diamonds) (Don’t judge)
The Dead Heart (Midnight Oil)
Mr. Spock (Nerf Herder)

(Bonus link: The next song that came up, Sisters of Mercy’s This Corrosion, has an unintentionally hilarious music video.)

Your turn–leave your recommendations in the comments!

p.s. – If your comment includes a lot of links, it may be automatically flagged as spam. If that happens, just drop me a line and I’ll fish it out of the spam folder.

Last week I mentioned the Blind Date with a Book book-swap idea, and intrepid reader xJane commented:

This. Sounds like fun. It also sounds like the kind of thing that Amazon (or the like) needs to enable for ebooks. I have a bunch of books that I think it would be fun to spring upon you and your unsuspecting readers you and your readers might enjoy, but since they’re not physical, it’s harder to share them.

Well, we may not be able to share them, but we can at least recommend ‘em. I’ll go first.

I’d like to suggest Dan Simmons as an author whose oeuvre should be up my readers’ collective alley. Some of his novels (there are several more) include:

Song of Kali – An American journalist travels to Calcutta and encounters a horrific cult which worships Kali.

Carrion Comfort – Multiple timelines weave together a story of “mind vampires” who can use their powers to completely control anyone.

Drood – Fictionalized account of the last few years of Charles Dickens’ life, explaining why his final novel remained unfinished.

Prayers to Broken Stones – A great collection of short stories, covering topics as diverse as the familial implications of returning from the dead, a combat theme park in Vietnam, and a barber’s guild with a dark secret.

Summer of Night – A Stephen King-esque tale of five pre-teen protagonists who discover something terrifying in an old school building. Its sequel, A Winter Haunting, finds one of them as an adult encountering something that was left behind.

The Terror – Fictionalized account of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, a lost Arctic expedition.

Now it’s your turn: What books do you think other readers of this site might enjoy? Leave your suggestions in the comments!

Oh wow you guys: Intrepid reader Cookie has found the motherlode of information related to carnival sideshows. Sideshow World is “dedicated to preserving the past while promoting the future of sideshow for fans and performers alike.”

Their historical section covers all the old standbys: Feejee mermaids and flea circuses and medicine shows and fortune-tellers and loads more, copiously peppered with vintage photos and artwork. They also have a useful “Ask the Staff” page where you can get help identifying photos or request information about sideshow acts of the past.

There’re discussions of carnival games and photos of taxidermied “freaks of nature.” Recipes for midway-style corn dogs and descriptions of various types of conjoined twins. Sword swallowers and tattooed ladies and dime museums and snake oil.

They’ve also got a large section devoted to modern sideshows, with performer bios, event listings, and heaps of links to related resources.

If you’ve ever considered a carnival-themed party, needed reference photos for sculpting a shrunken head, or wanted to frame some vintage midway posters, this is the place to look. Great stuff.

(Thanks, Cookie!)