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Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

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I’m excited to say that in Summer 2021, I will boldly go where no Signum University prof has...

I’m excited to say that in Summer 2021, I will boldly go where no Signum University prof has gone before! I will be offering the 12-week online class “Exploring Star Trek” for M.A. students and non-degree-seeking auditors alike. I’m delighted at this opportunity! I’m pleased to announce that we will have a very special guest at one meeting of the “Exploring Star Trek” Signum University class in Summer 2021: New York Times bestselling author Una McCormack! What a delight this will be! The catalog page for the “Exploring Star Trek” class is now available. See the link below! Exploring Star Trek
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Halloween 2020, Day 15

(Artwork is “Coven” by  Sadist-Ka.)
― Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching (2009)
 ― Beth Underdown, The Witchfinder’s Sister (2017)
Relevant to both titles above, here is a reading recommendation list from Sublime Horror that’s perfect for the season: “Witches in fiction, a reading list chosen by Professor Marion Gibson.” This is another seasonal reading list from Margaret Kingsbury at BuzzFeed News: “13 Witchy Books That Will Keep You Spellbound.” Last, Erika W. Smith offers these suggestions for Cosmopolitan: “24 Witch Books That Belong on Your Bookshelf.” And here’s one more quote for your day:
 ― Katherine Howe, The Penguin Book of Witches (2014)  
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Halloween 2020, Day 16

It’s film time! Every year about this time I think about good Halloween films (not necessarily horror movies, and definitely not lame slasher pictures, but suspenseful, atmospheric films that put a chill up the spine) that are “off the beaten path” – that is, films that are independent, foreign, direct to DVD or VOD, or somehow under promoted, and thus might easily slip under the proverbial radar. Not the classics. Not the usual suspects.
I’ve already made a separate post in the past with recommendations of Anton Yelchin’s Halloween-friendly films, so I won’t repeat those here.
Now I have a few new recommendations to add to my list, based on this past year’s viewing. (We accessed nearly all of these via Netflix or Amazon streaming.) Here they are in reverse chronological order: Here are my 2019 recommendations: You Should Have Left (2020): This is a very effective troubled-family-on-vacation film, packed with layered characterization and psychological unease. The incredible chemistry between Kevin Bacon and Avery Essex makes a genuinely moving father-daughter relationship the heart of this film. It really works. 
American Hangman (2019): This is a powerful thriller with a lot of meaning. Even though Donald Sutherland’s genius is undisputed, it’s still stunning to watch him here. I’ll use the official description so I don’t give more away than I should: “Two men are chained up in a basement. The captor has cameras aimed at them and is streaming it on the internet – turning it into a ‘trial’ on the held, retired judge’s last court case. The viewers become the jurors.” The Color Out of Space (2019): This is an adaptation of one of my very favorite Lovecraft works, so I was braced for disappointment. Instead, this turned out to be one of our favorite films of the year. Sensitive, poignant, and genuinely scary, this film genuinely delivers on every level, including the pathos inherent to the story. I’m agnostic about Nic Cage – he doesn’t make or break a film for me – but his performance really worked here, as did that of the ever-capable Joely Richardson. It was delightful to see Q'orianka Kilcher and Tommy Chong in solid supporting roles, as well. Watch this one!    Doctor Sleep (2019): This is an adaptation of Stephen King’s sequel to The Shining. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s interesting and visually stunning and packed with able actors. (Five words: Zahn McClarnon as Crow Daddy. I can’t stress this enough.) I’m sure many would find this crazy, but if given the choice right now, I would rather watch Doctor Sleep again than watch The Shining again. So there.   In the Tall Grass (2019): Is this the best Stephen King (more accurately, Stephen King and Joe Hill) adaptation ever? No. Did I enjoy every minute spent lost in the grass maze with over-the-top Patrick Wilson? Yes. Yes I did. Your mileage may vary based on your level of Patrick Wilson appreciation. Mine is high.    Midsommar (2019): Yes, I know this isn’t an “under the radar” film, but we really loved it, so I wanted to take this opportunity to say so.   Ready or Not (2019): Dark comedies are often hit or miss for me, but this newlywed-hunted-by-her-evil-in-laws-in-Satanic-ritual romp is a definite hit, both clever and funny. Vivarium (2019): This science-fiction mind-game of a horror film messed me up and continues to haunt me, and I mean that in the best possible way. I knew nothing about it going into the film, and I think that was for the best. Highly recommended.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2019): This is a very well crafted adaptation of a novel by Shirley Jackson that I love. I was prepared to be critical, but the film thoroughly won me over with brilliant visuals and performances – Taissa Farmiga and Alexandra Daddario are phenomenal – and a screenplay that emphasizes how relevant this story remains. Read the book first, but then treat yourself to this movie.    Delirium (2018): This isn’t a great film, but it keeps the twists and turns coming, and it uses the unreliability of the protagonist’s hallucination-laden point of view to good effect. You really need to suspend your disbelief to swallow the “young man released from twenty years in a mental asylum into house arrest at his dead father’s mansion” premise, but once you’re there, the oppressive isolation and sense of unreality are worth your time.    The Wind: Demon of the Prairies (2018): This slow-burn Western plays on the horror and desperation of solitude – especially for settler women – on the frontier. Women’s points of view are highlighted here in a refreshing and chillingly effective way.
Lost Child (a.k.a. Tatterdemalion) (2018): We were really enchanted and moved by this work of “hillbilly Gothic” or Ozark folk horror. When a combat veteran returns home with the scars of war on her psyche, she encounters a boy in the woods. Is he a lost child in need of her help, or is he the tatterdemalion of local lore, a demon who wants to feed on her very life? This is a quiet, haunting, compelling story of pain, superstition, and the people who fall through the cracks. 
Voice from the Stone (2017): This is a classic old-school Gothic film of the “new governess for troubled child after mother’s death” mold, and it delivers all of the lush atmosphere, claustrophobia, and passion needed. This is a beautifully disturbing movie. Kudos to Emilia Clarke for her compelling performance.   Bone Tomahawk (2015): Why on Earth did I wait so long to watch this Western horror film? More Patrick Wilson, more Zahn McClarnon, both tremendous pluses. Outstanding Kurt Russell content. Genuinely scary and less gratuitously gory than I’d feared.  Lake Mungo (2008): I’m so glad Mike Davis of The Lovecraft eZine recommended this film, which is a “mockumentary” about a family trying to come to turns with the drowning death of the daughter/sister. Are we witnessing how grief yields false hope and makes us vulnerable to charlatans, or is something supernatural taking place? This is a subtle work of slowly-mounting terror. Really delicious. Mike now tells me that if I loved this film, I need to read Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Tremblay, so I’m going to do that too!    Click below for my recommendations from previous years.  Read more …
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Long Live the Halflings!

Today is the anniversary of the Long-Expected Party celebrating the eleventy-first birthday of Bilbo Baggins and the coming of age of Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings. It was on this day that Bilbo gave his infamous birthday speech, saying “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve,” before disappearing from the Shire forever.
Also on this day, according to the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, 99-year-old Samwise Gamgee rode out from Bag End for the final time. He was last seen in Middle-Earth by his daughter Elanor, to whom he presented the Red Book. According to tradition, he then went to the Grey Havens and passed over the Sea, last of the Ringbearers.     And now, in honor of the Baggins Birthdays, the departure of Samwise, and Hobbits in general, here is the song of one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s (and, for that matter, world literature’s) greatest heroes, Samwise Gamgee, when in Cirith Ungol. In this very difficult times, I find myself returning to these verses in particular. They are the epitome of Hobbits and of hope. In western lands beneath the Sun
the flowers may rise in Spring,
the trees may bud, the waters run,
the merry finches sing.
Or there maybe ‘tis cloudless night
and swaying beeches bear
the Elven-stars as jewels white
amid their branching hair.

Though here at journey’s end I lie
in darkness buried deep,
beyond all towers strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun
and Stars for ever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
nor bid the Stars farewell.  - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

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Halloween 2020, Day 26

I am so delighted and grateful that @OGOMProject put a vintage 1978 book on my radar this year: The Dracula Cookbook: Authentic Recipes from the Homeland of Count Dracula by Marina Polvay. I was able to find a copy in good shape, and it’s a treasure. If you’d like some festive and spooky mood reading, here is the introduction to the section on “Wines & Special Drinks”: And here are a couple of recipes, in case you like the warm, red stuff (but not in a vampiric kind of way):  The Count and the Bride seem to enjoy it. 
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Halloween 2020, Day 17

If you’re looking for a truly beautiful and meaningful work to read this October, then try this first novel from one of my favorite authors, Lipan Apache wordsmith Darcie Little Badger. This is not a work about Halloween, but with magic and monsters, murder and ghosts, it’s perfect for the season.  In fact, it’s perfect, full stop. By page four, Elatsoe had me: “She could handle mundane dangers, like violent men with guns or knives, but every tunnel, bridge, and abandoned building in the city was allegedly home to monsters. She’d heard whispers about clans of teenage-bodied vampires, carnivorous mothmen, immortal serial killers, devil cults, cannibal families, and slenderpeople.” What genius is this? And don’t get me started on the scarecrows with real human eyes. Or Kirby the ghost dog, the best boy ever. Or the locals who stare at strangers. Or Teddy Roosevelt. Here is the official description of Elatsoe: “Imagine an America very similar to our own. It’s got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream. There are some differences. This America been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should never see the light of day. Elatsoe lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered, in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry. The picture-perfect facade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to tear off the mask and protect her family.” 
I can’t recommend this young-adult novel highly enough (for YA and adult readers alike). I laughed and I cried; I also punched the air in triumph three separate times. I want to foist this book on everyone I know.  Here is a taste: - from Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger (2020)  You can read a longer excerpt from Elatsoe here and access a Q&A with Darcie Little Badger and see related videos here. You can also find links to some of Darcie Little Badger’s spooky online short stories on her website here. The book is gorgeously illustrated by artist Rovina Cai. 

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The House of Night, Watchmen, and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921

In my latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the new episode of the StarShipSofa podcast, I talk about Ray Bradbury’s concept of science fiction as a “reflecting shield” by discussing The House of Night, Watchmen, and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. You can listen here. 
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Halloween 2020, Day 30

(Photos above by Yours Truly. Plaster castings by Pumpkintown Primitives. The above are “1730s Lamson Death Head Plaster Casting” on top and “Plaster Casting Poole Stone 1754″ on bottom.)
Look no more for some perfect streaming music for this Halloween season!
Celebrating its 22nd year, “Out ov the Coffin” is hosted by the fabulous DJ Ichabod. What was born as a means of spreading dark and esoteric music to the Nashville area via WRVU, broadcasting from my graduate alma mater, Vanderbilt University (Go ‘Dores!), is now an spine-tingling and atmospheric podcast. Check it out for some perfect seasonal music! You won’t be sorry.
Here is the official description of the show: “’Out ov the Coffin’ is a specialty dark-music radio program, hosted by DJ Ichabod, designed to celebrate dark and interesting styles of music, from the goth perspective. Brand new entries are featured each episode, alongside older favorites and cult classics. Oft-featured sub-genres include: Goth, Gothic rock, deathrock, post-punk, darkwave, ebm, industrial, damnbient / dark ambient, dark metal, neoclassical, ethereal works, film scores, and theatrical experimentation.”
The time has come: The 2020 “Out ov the Coffin” Halloween Special is now available!  Here is the official description of the episode:  Listen to or download the special here! Pssst! Scroll through earlier shows to find past Halloween specials. Last year’s was brilliant! If you really want to party on (or like it’s) Halloween, you can play several Halloween specials back to back! DJ Ichabod’s regular shows also make for perfectly splendid spooky listening.  
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Halloween 2020, Day 21

(Photo by Elizabeth. See the original source here.)  - from “Since I Died” by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, originally in Scribner’s Monthly (February 1873), as published in Avenging Angels: Ghost Stories by Victorian Women Writers edited by Melissa Edmundson (2018)   
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 15: The Truly Devious Series by Maureen Johnson (2018-2021) Quote from Truly Devious (2018):  It was, in short, idyllic and fantastical, and may have remained as such had it not been for that foggy night in April 1936 when Truly Devious struck. Schools may be famous for many things: academics, graduates, sports teams. They are not supposed to be famous for murders.
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Halloween 2020, Day 12

(Photo is “Spooky Woods” by GypsyMist.) Do you consider crime thrillers and murder mysteries good reading fare for the Halloween season?  I do. And I’m glad that we’re in a time when crime fiction by Indigenous American writers is increasingly recognized and celebrated. Here’s a terrific article by Lakota author David Heska Wanbli Weiden for CrimeReads: “Why Indigenous Crime Fiction Matters.” He also contributed this useful reading list for The Strand: “Seven Essential Native American Crime Novels.” Speaking of David Heska Wanbli Weiden, I read, thoroughly enjoyed, and highly recommend his gripping 2020 novel Winter Counts, which is a (to borrow the official description) “groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx.” A tense and engrossing read.  And speaking of his essay on “Why Indigenous Crime Fiction Matters,” I was very glad to see Cherokee novelist John Rollin Ridge mentioned front and center. Earlier this year in my monthly “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast, on Episode 628, I discussed how we can trace parts of Batman’s origin back to John Rollin Ridge and his fiction. 
(Photo by Yours Truly.) Perhaps my favorite discovery this year is the wonderful Cash Blackbear mystery/crime series, including Murder on the Red River (2017) and Girl Gone Missing (2019), by White Earth Nation author Marcie R. Rendon. Set during the Vietnam Conflict, these books follow 19-year-old Cash Blackbear – “aged-out foster child, girl pool shark, truck driver from Minnesota’s White Earth reservation” – who asks questions, has dreams, and regularly helps out her friend Wheaton, the cop who is her family by choice rather than blood, as he solves crimes. These books deliver on mood and atmosphere while also telling difficult, important, meaningful stories. Here is one of Cash Blackbear’s vivid and haunting dreams:
- from Marcie R. Rendon, Girl Gone Missing (2019)
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 1: Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson (1951) Quote: Poor things, she thought - do they have to spend all this energy just to surround me? It seemed pitiful that these automatons should be created and wasted, never knowing more than a minor fragment of the pattern in which they were involved, to learn and follow through insensitively a tiny step in the great dance which was seen close up as the destruction of Natalie, and far off, as the end of the world. They had all earned their deaths, Natalie thought…
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Halloween 2020, Day 23

This year I took part in the Ladies of Horror Fiction anniversary mini-readathon, and one of the titles I read is going straight into my next class syllabus: Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor (2019). What a powerful, insightful, and beautifully written work this is! Highly recommended. Here is the official description: “Leila Taylor takes us into the dark heart of the American gothic, analysing the ways it relates to race in America in the twenty-first century. Haunted houses, bitter revenants and muffled heartbeats under floorboards — the American gothic is a macabre tale based on a true story. Part memoir and part cultural critique, Darkly: Blackness and America’s Gothic Soul explores American culture’s inevitable gothicity in the traces left from chattel slavery. The persistence of white supremacy and the ubiquity of Black death feeds a national culture of terror and a perpetual undercurrent of mourning. If the gothic narrative is metabolized fear, if the goth aesthetic is romanticized melancholy, what does that look and sound like in Black America?” And here is a sample of Taylor’s haunting prose: - from  Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor (2019)
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Halloween 2020, Day 5

One of the coolest new-to-me discoveries of this year is  The Black Vampyre; A Legend of St. Domingo (1819), which Andrew Barger (in The Best Vampire Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Vampire Anthology) credits as quite possibly “the first black vampire story, the first comedic vampire story, the first story to include a mulatto vampire, the first vampire story by an American author, and perhaps the first anti-slavery short story.”  Common-Place: The Journal of Early American Life has a “Just Teach One” page devoted to The Black Vampyre, including the complete text with introduction and notes prepared by Duncan Faherty (Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center) and Ed White (Tulane University), and several illuminating essays written by teachers who have included this text in their classes. You can read or download The Black Vampyre and these additional resources for free here. Here is a spine-tinging excerpt from The Black Vampyre:
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Halloween 2020, Day 14

For today I have some great lists of Halloween-appropriate reading for younger readers as well as scary-story lovers of all ages. First, from Angie Manfredi: “Shivers & Shudders: Scary Middle Grade Books.”
Second, from the Spooky KidLit site (“Celebrating the kids’ books that go bump in the night.”), two lists: “Celebrating Black Authors, Part 1″ and “Celebrating Black Authors, Part 2.” One of the stellar books recommended in two of the lists above is The Forgotten Girl by India Hill Brown (2019), and here’s a haunting little taste: You can read a longer excerpt from The Forgotten Girl here.  And here’s some great news! The Forgotten Girl is one of four books being adapted for television: “Scholastic Entertainment to Develop ‘JumpScare’ Kids Animated Horror Series With ‘Ben 10’ Team.”
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Halloween 2020, Day 10

(Artwork is “Autumn” by lunarhare.)
Today’s reading recommendation list is “Joke’s on you: Five parodies of the ghost story” by Lewis Hurst for Sublime Horror. In Hurst’s words, “I used to avoid ‘funny’ ghost stories. Humour seemed at odds with the effect I sought from reading about the supernatural. It dispelled the atmosphere, leaving the stories, and the reader, disenchanted. Later on, I learned that horror could be funny, and that funny things can be horrific.”
And here is an excerpt from one of the stories Hurst mentions, “The Open Window” by Saki (1914):   The short story is online (in Saki’s collection Beasts and Super-Beasts) here at Project Gutenberg.  
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Halloween 2022: Day 26

Song: “Darlin’ Cory” Quote: Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadows.
Dig a hole in the cold, cold ground.
Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadows,
Gonna lay darlin’ Cory down. There are many versions of this song. Read more here. Listen to Driftwood Company’s performance…
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Halloween 2020, Day 4

Halloween 2020, Day 4 – from The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf (2020) This year I fell in love with the middle-grade novel The Girl and the Ghost, which is based on Malaysian folktales about the pelesit, a shape-shifting spirit bound to serve a single master. In the novel, young Suraya inherits such a ghost from her witch grandmother and learns that this pelesit is loyal – and jealous. Hanna Alkaf offers genuine chills as well as laughs, but most importantly she delivers a thought-provoking, heart-warming, life-affirming story of loss, grief, friendship, and family. The characters feel so real!  Don’t let the middle-grade classification of this story fool you; The Girl and the Ghost has much to offer readers of all ages, including plenty of ghosts, graveyards, and spookiness. You can read a longer excerpt from The Girl and the Ghost here or listen to sample from the audiobook here.     View the full article  
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