Jump to content
Post-Update: Forum Issues Read more... ×
BPAL Madness!
Post-Update: Forum Issues
  • entries
    355
  • comments
    5
  • views
    17,084

About this blog

Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

Entries in this blog

 

Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 31

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! ? I hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s countdown, and I hope you have a fabulous Halloween! Dark Academia novel: When All the Girls Are Sleeping by Emily Arsenault (2021) Quote: Most of the girls had simply heard the same things about the Winter Girl over their years at Windham that I had: that her name might be Sarah. That she haunted in January or February. That she knocked on doors or could be seen in a white nightgown in the hallway if you got up and ventured to the bathroom after midnight. That she was to blame for the various weird noises in the building on winter nights. That she had been spurned by a young man and killed herself in her room. One girl said something I hadn’t heard before, though: Some girls say that she’s looking for her replacement. That she’s tired of being a ghost, that she’ll strangle or smother you in your bed if you’re not careful. And then you’re the ghost.   ALT
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 30: The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky (2021)
Quote 1: And when you’re truly scared, there’s nowhere to hide - no private school, no popularity, no trust fund. It’s just you and your most base emotion. Fear is where the truth lies.
Quote 2: But there was something wrong with me. It clawed at my insides, desperate to get out.
Quote 3: If you want this to be over, just make sure she screams.
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

<p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://dramyhs...

dramyhsturgis: Registration for RRIII: The Expanding Universe is now officially OPEN! Join now to attend this three day digital conference May 4-6, 2023 for social events (cosplay reception), panels, brilliant keynotes, and all things Star Wars! Realizing Resistance Episode III Tickets | Digital Cultural Studies Cooperative
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2022: Day 16

Song: “Banks of the Ohio” Quote: I held a knife against his breast As into my arms he pressed. He cried, “My love, don’t murder me! I’m not prepared for eternity.” Read the complete lyrics. Listen to the performance of Gangstagrass Feat. Alexa Dirks:
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2022: Day 23

Song: “Katie Dear” Quote: Then he picked up this golden dagger,
And stove it through his troubled heart,
Saying, “Goodbye, Katie, goodbye darling. The time has come for us to part.” There are many versions of this song. Read more here. Listen to the performance of Brennan Leigh & Noel McKay…
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2022: Day 28

Song: “Graveyard Blues” Quote: I got up this morning,
With the blues all around my bed.
I got up this morning,
With blues all around my bed.
I had a dream last night
The one that I loved was dead. Read the complete lyrics. Listen to the performance of Roscoe Holcomb…
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

30 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 18: If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio (2017)
Quote 1: But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart — by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.  Quote 2: You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.

View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Two Visits to Hill House!

I’ll be starting 2024 with two visits to Hill House! I’m joining SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online with Signum University. My first modules include The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (January) and its authorized sequel, A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand (February). Registration is now open for January’s module. Voting is now open for February’s module. Here are more details. I hope to see you in SPACE! ALT ALT
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 2: Conversion by Katherine Howe (2014) Quote: Something was eating away at the back of my brain. Girls. Dominant narratives. Sex. Death. Arthur Miller. Ann Putman sitting invisible right in the middle of history.  
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Tomorrow It Begins!

Tomorrow is October! This will be the fifteenth year I count down to Halloween with daily “spooky posts.” I hope you’ll join me. Throughout October I will also be rereading one of my all-time favorite books, Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October (1994). It recounts (from the point of view of the dog Snuff) the story of a very eventful October and has 31 chapters, one for every day of the month. In recent years I’ve started treating it as an advent calendar of sorts for Halloween. It’s simply brilliant.  Here are a few atmospheric quotes. “Such times are rare, such times are fleeting, but always bright when caught, measured, hung, and later regarded in times of adversity, there in the kinder halls of memory, against the flapping of the flames.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October “I felt a strong desire to howl at the moon. It was such a howlable moon. But I restrained myself.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October
“I took Jack his slippers this evening and lay at his feet before a roaring fire while he smoked his pipe, sipped sherry, and read the newspaper. He read aloud everything involving killings, arsons, mutilations, grave robberies, church desecrations, and unusual thefts. It is very pleasant just being domestic sometimes.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October
And here’s one of my favorite passages. Snuff is describing Sherlock Holmes, disguised for his investigation as a woman, playing his violin with Romani travelers in their temporary camp:

“He played and he played, and it grew wilder and wilder–

“Abruptly, he halted and took a step, as if suddenly moving out of a dream. He bowed then and returned the instrument to its owner, his movements in that moment entirely masculine. I thought of all the controlled thinking, the masterfully developed deductions, which had served to bring him here, and then this ― this momentary slipping into the wildness he must keep carefully restrained ― and then seeing him come out of it, smiling, becoming the woman again. I saw in this the action of an enormous will, and suddenly I knew him much better than as the pursuing figure of many faces. Suddenly I knew that he had to be learning, as we were learning other aspects, of the scope of our enterprise, that he could well be right behind us at the end, that he was almost, in some way, a player – more a force, really ― in the Game, and I respected him as I have few beings of the many I have known.”   ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October 
View the full article
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

OCT. 7: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (2019) Quote 1: I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me. Quote 2: All you children playing with fire, looking surprised when the house burns down.
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 13: Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas (2020) Quote: You are here. You are in. And doesn’t it feel good?
You are in the house and the house is in the woods.
You are in the house and the house is in you.
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

<p class="npf_link" data-npf='{"type":"link","u...

Watch Now: Race Massacre graves researchers need DNA, genealogies to tie burials to victims Utah Cold Case Coalition Intermountain Forensics is seeking DNA help from anyone who may have relatives from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Researchers think DNA is the best chance for the case known for now as “burial 27” to be the first conclusively identified victim of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. In a project update Wednesday with reporters, University of Oklahoma archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck expressed optimism the team’s efforts could possibly have “successfully located the first victim of the massacre” after a young Black man was exhumed with two bullets from a potter’s field corner of Oaklawn Cemetery.
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2022: Day 14

Song: “Witches of Harlan” Quote: I’ve heard the stories since I was a kid:
Witches of Harlan haunt Black Mountain Ridge.
Some say at midnight they roam the mountainside
Searching for anybody that isn’t safe inside.

No, I hear ‘em whisper in the pines,
I hear 'em calling to me
To come on outside. Read the complete lyrics. Listen to the performance of Breaking Grass…
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Teaching Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman

Teaching Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman (1951) by Amy H. Sturgis I’m happy to say that my “Teaching Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman (1951)” post, based on my experience of teaching Shirley Jackson in my graduate Dark Academia course in Fall 2022, is now online at Reading Shirley Jackson in the 21st Century.
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

STAR TREK: ESSAYS EXPLORING THE FINAL FRONTIER is here!

I’m so excited to share this with the universe! This anthology includes contributions from Emily Strand, Una McCormack, Daniel Unruh, Edward Guimont, Brunella Tedesco-Barlocco, Kristina Šekrst, Javier Francisco, Erin Bell, Martine Gjermundsen Ræstad, Andrew Higgins, John Jackson Miller, and me. The cover art is by Emily Austin. More information, including the full Table of Contents, is at the link below. The book can be requested via libraries as a hardcover or ebook, and the coupon code CFC10822213C4 provides a 24% “new release!” discount at the Vernon Press website: https://vernonpress.com/book/1672 ALT
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
×