ghoulnextdoor

A shimmering, aquatic rosy floral; phantom twins connected by sadness & secrets, waltzing mournfully in the moonlight, their iridescent, flickering veils intertwining and unwinding, soaked in rose water and tears.

I have always loved the idea of having a “soft place to fall”; a love that offers safe harbor, that wraps you in its warm, uncomplicated embrace. This, I think, is far from the imagery that the idea of “amour fou”--mad love, or insane passion, is wont to conjure when you roll the concept of it around in your imagination. But that is what Amour Fou smells of to me: the dusty, woody soft shadowy green musk of moss, combined with the bitter/smokey birch tar scent of worn leather, combing to create a warmth that is equal to that of gently falling asleep at night, curled quietly in your lover’s arms. And, yet... perhaps that wild, frenzied amour fou simmers low and silent in your heart still and surges madly with every deep, dreaming breath they take beside you. What a marvel, this balm. This haven. This fever.

The sea, grey and restless on an overcast morning, just as the sun is glimmering through the clouds. A scent of marine breezes, salted shore, and fluttering sea grasses, with a gleam of something glowing and chilly, a streak of citrus, a lemony-floral-fresh yuzu, with a bit of a mineralic tang. Bioluminescent algae dappling a dark sea cave wall.

I can’t imagine a lovelier scent than this fragrant interpretation of the object my heart treasures above all things. The dusty-grassy-vanillin smell of faded pages from a favorite tale and a glossy, enchanted ink distilled from marzipan and apricots dried to small, sweet wrinkled pillows in a 100 years’ sleep.

Fiercely peppery upon first sniff, this is a bone-dry, nose-tickling experience that after time, morphs into a pleasantly herbaceous, aromatic sage that straddles the line between sweet and savory. Depending on time of day, temperature, body chemistry, and who knows what else, at this stage in its metamorphosis, it fluctuates between the honeyed haze of a ritualistic smudge and the astringent warmth of that essential herb in your granny’s Thanksgiving stuffing–and sometimes it is both at once.

The woody warmth of the sandalwood in Lorraine Cross glows like a solemn halo, bright and golden where upon the first light strikes and delicately crumbling to milky powder where the shadows possess it. The blooming beauty of the rose is the earthy floral tether that twines around the heart of this scent, anchoring it to this world. Lorraine Cross is a scent both lofty and grounded, comprised of light and darkness and summons visions of dignity, noble intent, and pure hearts. I can totally imagine Brienne of Tarth wearing it.

Inspired by the sparrow claw clasped Lydia cocktail ring and does indeed smell like how you might imagine our beloved goth icon and kindred spirit Lydia Deetz in 2016. Bitter at the onset, with a metallic tang, it swiftly evolves into a rich, leathery, balsamic amber fragrance. Sharp and biting, moody and mercurial, Lydia is indeed strange and unusual.

At first sniff, Briar Rose is a dusty late summer bloom, recalling somnolent stories of crumbling castles bound with prickling vines, charred spinning wheels, and moth-eaten slumber. It blossoms, furiously, into a full blown curse, ripe with lemon, berries, and anise, and finally wilts with the trembling fear of sleep and the scent of crushed, desiccated petals, marking the page of a terrible tale that all too often is more true than we can dream.

I am blind, initially, in the cool, murky patchouli-fied and daunting darkness of this fragrance, (somewhat similar to the dark, root-y Owl Moon from Chapter I) but in the dark there is a glimmering speck, a glowing point of warmth that begins to grow brighter. A kind traveler with a light aloft in the gloom, flickering and flaring, and redolent of a salty, maple/molasses note. This unexpected sweetness wonderfully balances out that coldly aloof, earthy dankness– a tender meeting of one’s shadow in the light.

This is a glowing, luminous scent, where the velvety opulence of the tuberose, the sultry, narcotic jasmine, and the clean, bright lily of the valley sing, crystalline and delicate, softening the earthy edge of the patchouli. A night-blooming bouquet, wrapped in a gauzy veil, and glimmering with the tears of the moon.

My first thought regarding Petite Planchette is that it is a dreadfully charming scent. Imagine, during an evening with the spirits, employing a delicately wrought planchette, carved of a sweet, somber wood, and connecting with a childish phantom. Peals of laughter float throughout the darkened parlour as she riddles and mocks, and a faint scent of sugared treats lingers when she falls silent. There’s a touch of something that won’t quite behave–not fruit, not cake or pudding, but a fruity-not-fruitiness that’s really quite bratty in its unwillingness to reveal itself. I can perfectly imagine golden-haired, tragically complicated Claudia of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles smelling of Petite Planchette.

Planchette is quite elusive, and the message it communicates to me is mutable, mercurial. An undercurrent of sweet, fruity resin remains true, but apart from that, and in the span of five minutes, I catch alternating whiffs of honeyed cherry tobacco, dark, sugared confections, and lemony anise tea. I am reminded more of a lively, charged atmosphere wherein strangers sip and nibble amongst whispered chatter, and clasp hands excitedly, anticipating a custom, phantasmal communiqué from beyond–rather than the medium through which the ectoplasmic memo arrived.

A symbiosis of the moon and the magnificent night owl. A dark, rooty, sweet patchouli swirled with honey. A scent steeped in mythology and magic, Owl Moon opens with the blackest, earthiest patchouli (before learning of the notes, I actually thought it was vetiver!) and calls to mind cool, moist soil at the base of a pine tree through which all of the busy little night creatures slither and crawl, the pale, ghostly light of the moon glinting off their scales and wings. A yellow-eyed owl, perched overhead, meditates briefly before silently embarking on his nightly hunt; the sour, screechy scent of his nest, littered with rodent bones and pellets, serves as a warning nearby.  This is the fragrance of potent night magics, rich and ripe with darkness and feral mysticism. The sharpness of the patchouli streaked with high-pitched honey combine to form an aura that is both graceful and grotesque, sacred and profane. It dries down to a spellbinding, narcotic musk within an hour or so, and I predict many a darkling will fall rapturously in love with this bewitching nocturnal perfume.

This is patchouli like I have never encountered it; wet, it is straight up patchoulified candy fluff, dirty spun-sugar. Dry, it is more complex, carmelized brown sugar and woodsy musk. I’m not usually one for foody or gourmand scents, but Silky Bat is a delightful, delicious creation.

LEKYTHOI Smells of the brine of the ocean and resinous petrified sap of ancient trees, like cool, polished sea glass and golden amber laced with tiny bubbles, heaped tall in vessels of dusty clay and submerged in rich, grassy olive oil. Offerings to appease the sirens, left on the crashing tides of lonely islands amidst tumbling, clackering piles of sailor’s bones. 

Oil of Flight & Vision is rooty and resinous, dark and droll, and brings to mind Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “Hamatreya”, in which the poet reveals the earth song of dark-humored flowers, laughing to see the men who steer the plows unable to steer clear of the grave. How every one of them who lay claim to the land, who wished to control it, are now asleep beneath the very dirt they thought they owned. I like to imagine subversive, psychoactive roots and blossoms,--hallucinogenic henbane, tarry opium, bittersweet mugwort--growing from the bones of those dead and being used in enigmatic preparations like fabled witches’ flying ointments. And whether or not those witchly botanical balms induced actual levitation and soaring under a full moon through the midnight air or was key to a ritual for one to travel the astral planes in spirit, I delight in the imagery of witches being borne aloft on the musky-throated gallows humor of grim growing things sprung forth from and thriving in grave dirt.  Oil and Flight and Vision perfectly encapsulates the poetry of that sentiment.

Time is a Phoenix is a scent of the mythical and miraculous, but also of the intensely, personally, mundane. Fed on tears of sacred incense, resinous and volcanic, honeyed and bittersweet, fanning its own ancient, acrid spice-scented flames, a fiery vision of scarlet and gold and eternal return, the scent left in wake of this being is incendiary, incandescent, immortal. 

But there is also this. A funeral pyre flipped through a pinhole in the darkened chamber of a camera obscura, the ashes of the afterimage captured in a winding sheet of amber: the wild, joyful zest of loving, the sour sighing sorrow of leaving, the impossible weeping, sweating, earthly-tethered, salty-sweetness of living– and through it all, climbing into our own, us-shaped mortal infernos, again and again, and again.

{TLDR; it’s very earthy, warm, rich resins and spice}

I wore The Queen of May on my birthday, and it is without question a scent of the riotous pageantry of blooms flourishing madly, an exuberant brightness of petals every shade of the spectrum, primrose and poppy, cornflower and calendula, lilac and lily are a few that I envision but it could be all or none of them! Florals delicate, milky, and sweet as well as earthy, green, and bitter, they could have hallucinogenic or aphrodisiac qualities, or they could have a soporific effect and induce the most beautiful dreams of flower-crowned celebrations and dizzying Maypole dances. Beneath these flower’s roots, as the fragrance unfolds on the skin, is a heart note echoing with the whispers of dried bouquets and a phantom whiff of marshmallow musk.

Ah, yes. The legendary salacious kiss bestowed upon the devil’s bunghole. A supposed diabolic perversion of the church’s Kiss of Peace. Classic Witchsploitation. All jokes about the devil’s butthole aside, Osculum Infame is a very intimate scent. Delicate, though. I wouldn’t go as far as to say primal. The notes of raw honey and black amber are soft and languid, but most assuredly at the forefront, heightening and preserving the sweetness of everything in their wake. The sap more crystalline, the candied fruits more sugared, the resinous musk of the labdanum somehow fruitier. The scent of paying tribute to Satan’s fundament smells pretty amazing, actually.

Leather and strange, bitter powder, mineralic like a finely ground rock and rain. Sediment from ghostly carvings on exposed bedrock in hollow, liminal spaces where cave meets coastline, land meets water. The descent into a dream, the dust in the footprints you followed in the hopes to meet yourself and give yourself what you needed most. The sweetness at the end of a cosmic journey, musky and sweet, cognac and mallow, deep, satisfied swallows of this honeyed brew.

A scent fumaceous and piquant, fiery groves of birch, cypress, and pine, sizzling wafts of charring campfire, wisps of aromatic herbs and spices spindling in a smoky column toward heaven, and a tin mug of lapsang souchong tea under the pinprick glow and atmospheric glittering of one hundred thousand stars.

There are so many *perfect* scents in this collection, but every time I sniff the uncanny geography of The Lilac Wood I think, ah, this, THIS is the one! Green sap and misty grass, peaceful, delicate moss, emerald ferns, and the wistful dreams of flowers in a patch of shade underneath the old ash tree with the lightning-riven trunk

This is a deliriously ethereal, gauzy, gossamer slip of a scent, with that wintry, woody orris and the aqueous verdancy of the lettuce, and the white quartz, snow-melt nip of chilled water with the tiniest bite of bitterness, the last drop in an icy chalice of sorrow. But there’s a carnal quality there, too, of worldly concerns and sensual delights, like…cupcakes. A mild cocoa butter creaminess and a milky nuttiness coalesce to form a tiny mythical gateau, a small frosted treat with a floral crumb sprinkled with a scattering of star shards– that one might leave out to lure magical creatures… fairies or pixies… or even unicorns.

The Butterfly is fizzy and effervescent, somehow both airy and earthy, the petitgrain so lemony and peppery, and the amber so honeyed…they’re so sweet and playful together. In the bottle, it’s deeply loamy–that sweet, dark, earthy scent that I love so very much!– but on the skin, the scent lightens in such a strange way that has to do with the absence of shadow more than any direct brightness. It is velvety and opulent, but it’s finery worn in jest.

 I inhale this scent and my heart instantly hears “I know you. I’d be blind and I’d know what you are.” Schmendrick brings me to tears. An earthy, woodsy, deeply aromatic tobacco leaf, vanilla-y, apple-y chamomile, and a thoughtful, pruney musk.