Jump to content
Post-Update: Forum Issues Read more... ×
BPAL Madness!
Post-Update: Forum Issues
  • entries
    379
  • comments
    6
  • views
    28,233

About this blog

Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

Entries in this blog

 

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
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 10: This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers (2012)
Quote 1: We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the soundtrack of our own impending death. Quote 2: Sometimes you catch something specific like the screams and cries of people trying to hold on to each other before they’re swallowed into other, bigger noises. This is what it sounds like when the world ends.
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
 

Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 17

Dark Academia novel: The Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven (2022) Quote: It was open on the very last page I’d looked at: ‘How the Ritual Was Performed’. I wondered which of my fellow philosophy students had stumbled upon it. And why did they leave in such a hurry that they left the volume lying around like a piece of old junk? The page was exactly as I last saw it, with one tiny, significant exception: the droplet of blood in the bottom right corner. A small smudge, as though someone had pricked their finger on a spindle and then tried to turn the page. The sight made me smile. Someone had tried to perform the ritual. I knew it in my bones. There was someone at Carvell as intrigued by the occult as I was. For some reason, this knowledge bolstered me. In a moment, the decision was made. I was going to attempt the ritual too.   ALT
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 24

Dark Academia novel: The Ravens by Kass Morgan and Danielle Paige (2020) From the cover: These sorority girls are real witches. Quote: That was when she noticed the single tarot card positioned nearly at the head of her bare mattress, as if placed there by a careful hand. It was the Death card her mother had given her. The skeleton leered up at her with a gruesome smile, and for a moment, it almost looked like the eyes glowed red. Vivi shivered, despite knowing that it was a trick of the light. I told you. Westerly isn’t a safe place, not for people like you… ALT
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 29

Dark Academia novel: Fraternity by Andy Mientus (2022) From the cover: Be careful what you pledge. Quote: How to make a Perfect Storm: 1. Allow terrible, unholy powers to find their way into the hands of children. See that those children only half-translate their conjurations, missing key protective details. 2. Have them perform those conjurations at the very height of autumn, the dying of the year, when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. Make sure they are coming to the work not soberly but at an emotional breaking point, dripping blood, hungry for violence. Aim their violence at another child. 3. Pray for those children. Terrible consequences await them. ALT
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

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.  
View the full article
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 17: In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead (2021)
Quote: It turns out the real you is a quilt, made up of the light and the dark. The life you’ve lived in sunshine and your shadow life, stretching underneath the surface of your mind like a deep underwater world, exerting invisible power. You are a living, breathing story made up of the moments in time you cherish, all strung together, and those you hide. The moments that seem lost. Until the day they’re not.
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

In 1920, Native Women Sought the Vote. Here’s What They Seek Now.Native women were highly visible in...

In 1920, Native Women Sought the Vote. Here’s What They Seek Now. Native women were highly visible in early 20th-century suffrage activism. White suffragists, fascinated by Native matriarchal power, invited Native women to speak at conferences, join parades, and write for their publications. Native suffragists took advantage of these opportunities to speak about pressing issues in their communities — Native voting, land loss and treaty rights. But their stories have largely been forgotten.
View the full article
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
 

<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
 

The Last Dangerous Visions

On my latest “Looking Back at Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 745), I discuss the New Wave in science fiction and the Dangerous Visions anthologies, including the newly-published The Last Dangerous Visions. ALT ALT
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Meet The Last Man!

Meet The Last Man! In March 2024, I will be offering the module “Meet The Last Man” with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online via Signum University. Mary Shelley’s novel The Last Man is one of the most relevant books we can read right now, and I’m really looking forward to exploring it with students! Here is more information.
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2020, Day 18

(Art is “Zbrush Doodle: Day 1750 - Festive Pumpkin” by UnexpectedToy.)
For today, here is the atmospheric opening of the short story “Haunted!” by Jack Edwards, originally published in The Weekly Tale Teller #83 (December 3, 1910), as found in Glimpses of the Unknown: Lost Ghost Stories edited by Mike Ashley (2018):  

View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

<p>October is almost here! </p><p>I’m currently...

October is almost here! I’m currently working on new academic projects related to Dark Academia (the subgenre, not the aesthetic), so for Halloween month I’ll be posting a different DA title each day with a haunting/atmospheric quote. I hope you’ll enjoy the recs!
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2022: Day 1

October is here! This year for my Halloween countdown, with the invaluable assistance of my husband (and resident expert on all things Appalachian), I will be bringing you a spooky, Halloween-appropriate song with a twist of mountain flavor. I’ve chosen one version of each of these songs to share, but some have been recorded and reinterpreted many, many times. If you like “Boograss” (or Spooky Bluegrass), Southern Gothic tales, traditional murder ballads, ghost stories, and/or Halloween chills, I hope you will enjoy each day’s post! Song: “O Death” Quote: O Death, O Death in the morning, O Death, spare me over ‘til another year.
Listen to Rhiannon Giddens’ performance…
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2022: Halloween Day

Happy Halloween, everyone! Song: “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe Quote: The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me— Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. Read the complete poem. Listen to Joan Baez’s performance…
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2022: Day 2

Song: “Knoxville Boy” Quote: When the moon is high the Knoxville boy
Goes prowling out to kill.
We don’t know why so many die
To give that boy a thrill.
A handsome lad with a wealthy dad
And eyes of bluebird blue,
He’s killed before, he’ll kill some more,
And the next one could be you.

When the fog rolls into Knoxville
And the river’s on the rise,
Don’t go near the Knoxville boy
There’s murder in his eyes. Listen to Larry Stephenson’s performance…
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

2024 Wrap-Up: Talks

Some of the university and conference talks I gave this year are now online.
Why You Should Read The Last Man by Mary Shelley
Why You Should Read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
“A Fortnight in the Wilderness” with Alexis de Tocqueville
“Missing Students & Their Fictional Afterlives: True Crime, Crime Fiction, and Dark Academia" (presented at the Popular Culture Research Network’s “Guilty Pleasures: Examining Crime in Popular Culture” conference). View this presentation here.
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
×