The Season of Ghosts

[ghoulnextdoor]

The Season of Ghosts opens with the candies that lived in grandmother's crystal dishes - the confectionary citrus sweetness of pillowy circus peanuts and tangy jellied oranges glowing like stained glass. But it's the turn it takes, the transformation that haunts: a slow bloom of golden musty glamour that hints at powder puffs and hat veils, of the musky, mossy, bronze grandeur of those perfumes that filled rooms with their presence and lingered for days in fur coats. It's finding faded sepia-tinted photos in an ornate old candy tin of your grandmother from that unmistakable era, each image radiating the warmth of a moment when time moved slower and youth seems older than our own age now, more weighted with substance and shadow.

[Ennikar]

2024 version.

 

As above, I found the opening to be really reminiscent of citrus candies, those free orange suckers I used to get when my parents went to the bank. As it dries, it gets more musky, less candied, and just a tiny bit floral. The citrus notes stick around for a good while, which is nice, but I can be picky with citrus smells and this one is a little too lollipop for me.

[Sylvilagus]

2017 version.

 

There's at least one note in here that is really not working out with my skin chemistry. I love the scent of fresh lemongrass, but this lemongrass smells unpleasantly like "lemon-scented" cleaning spray, except when the blood orange joins in and turns it "orange-scented." The citronella quality that rose geranium sometimes has might be contributing to this. Something also goes very bitter on my skin, and I can't tell if that's the orange, the lemongrass, or something else; I'm not getting any recognizable ginger, so for all I know, this could be unrecognizable ginger.

 

There are some notes here that I like, too. That geranium is also invigoratingly minty-fresh (enough to make my nose tingle!), the frankincense is softly warm and powdery, and the bergamot pops out like a cheerful little bird. So I can imagine how this scent could be pleasantly uplifting, but the notes that don't work on me are just too prominent.

 

I first tried my decant when the oil was fresh, and it smelled cleaner-like and bitter. A few weeks ago, I tried it again to see how it aged, and it smelled cleaner-like and bitter. I tried it again this morning... and for a few minutes, it smelled divine.

Maybe it's because I had recently taken my hormones, or because I applied a bigger drop of oil than I had in the past, or both, but while it was wet on my skin, I experienced a version of this scent with no bitterness and no cleaning spray smell. It was chilly but joyous, a sunny winter celebration, the lemongrass as lemon candies sparkling like snow.

 

And then I got the cleaning spray and the bitterness again. Boo. It was beautiful while it lasted!