Man Cave... literally

I am a huge fan of when someone takes the time to transform their home, or at least their basement, into a fantastical environment. There are plenty of cool home theatres and man caves out there, but this one in particular caught my attention: someone built a haunted underground cavern in his basement. This is so freaking cool; check it out:

Wicked History: HH Holmes, America's First Serial Killer

Time for another installment in the Wicked History series. This time, I've chosen a subject near and dear to my blackened little heart: HH Holmes, the First American Serial Killer. I've found this excellent documentary that someone uploaded to YouTube which I feel does a pretty good job of summing up Holmes' life and murderous exploits. If your looking for something a little more in-depth, I'd suggest the book The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson (also a good read if your fan of Victorian arcana).
Now that you've watched the documentary, I'd like to throw in my two cents about Dr. Holmes: I think this guy would make an excellent theme for a haunted house. Think about: the hotel/murder factory he built lends itself so well to a haunted attraction enviroment; creepy decaying Victorian sets, hidden passageways/trap doors, screaming victims, Holmes himself popping up around corners, and finally, a trip down into a dank cellar full of gory animatronics and dissections in progress, along with the furnace he used to incernerate corpses. How bad-ass would that be? Besides, if Jack the Ripper has become fair game for a haunt theme, then I think Holmes could be used in the same way. Food for thought.

House on the Hill

Phantom Manor, Disneyland Paris, France. Probably the best facade I've ever seen for a haunted attraction.

Theatre du Grand Guignol

Love this poster.

Non Omnis Moriar

"One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls." - Neil Gaiman
I hope this provides inspiration to someone for a Halloween prop.

999

Found a vintage commercial for Disney's Haunted Mansion. Very old school.

Happy Birthday Mr. Poe

A toast to the Patron Saint of Horror Writers, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, who would have turned 205 on this day. Cheers, Edgar!

Art by Francesco Francavilla.

Edison's Frankenstein

The first Frankenstein movie ever made, as commissioned by Thomas Edison. Score by Life Towards Twilight.
Part 1: Part 2:

"Your Heart is Old"

A superb scene from a wonderful movie.

Devil Baby Attack NYC

In promotion of the movie Devil's Due, this demonic animatronic was set loose in New York City, with hilarious results.

Haunt of 2013, Part III

Time for some more haunt videos! First up is the Dunbar Haunt:
Darkrose Manor:
The very cool Big Worm's Sherwood Scare:
Now for a Pro Haunt, Sinister Pointe:
And finally, the King of Halloween - Pumpkinrot!

Another vlog entry!

Exactly what the title promises: a new vlog post. This time with showing off my new TV, my library, and a big announcment! 

Confessions of a would-be Serial Killer - A Short Story

This is a story I wrote a while back for a writing assignment  and I thought I'd post here for you to read, Specters. Just a warning: this story contains graphic violence, sexual content, and coarse language. If your reading this at work, I suggest you wait until you get home; and if your offend by aforementioned graphic violence/language/sexual content, well, why are you reading my blog? For the rest of you... enjoy.

Let me ask you a question: how many women serial killers do you know of? Not many, right? The only two people ever think of are the “vampire” Countess Bathory and that lezzie crack whore Wuornos.

Pathetic. Just Pathetic.

Some people are even stupid enough to think Lizzie Borden was a serial killer. Oh, she was a bad ass, no doubt, but the FBI will be the first ones to tell you she wasn't a serial killer; you need at least three victims with a “cooling-off” period. She had just two murders, within one hour. Not a serial killer by a long shot.

 Trust me when I say that I’ve done my fair share of research into this: most female serial killers seem to have a predisposition to killing kids. Not exactly fair, if you want my honest opinion. If you’re going to off somebody, make sure it’s somebody who would normally have a fair chance against you. That way, when you really go ape shit and skin their face or nail their genitals to the wall, you won’t t feel too bad. Hell, you might feel pretty good about yourself.

By now, you’re probably wondering why I’m rambling on about female killers: well, the short answer is, I am one.

Or at least, I was going to be.

I only managed to kill one motherfucker, as opposed to three.

Well, I supposed I should back up a little bit, give you some more information about myself. My name is Laura, and I had what could perhaps be the shittiest job in the whole damn country: I worked as a secretary at middle school. If you've been reading the papers at all, you’ll know which school I’m talking about. I absolutely hated it there. I went to school there, when I was a girl. People always go on about how middle school sucks, but I loathed mine beyond what everyone else feels. I would spend lunch sitting by myself, imagining all kinds of horrible fates for the kids who bullied me. They mocked my thrift store clothes, my acne-ridden face, my plain haircut. They stole my clothes and my towel while I was in the gym showers, then chased me through the hall naked, making “oink” noises (did I mention I was a little chubby back then?)

Whenever they taunted me, I imagined them stretched out in painful positions, their entrails spilt, their faces spattered with their own blood. If I kept those images in my mind, I managed to keep calm. I kept telling myself that it would stop one day; that things would get better. Well, shit if they didn’t.

Obviously, I got out of Middle School, and went on to high school, where the bullying kept going. They didn’t call me a pig anymore (I had lost a lot of weight), and my pimples went away, but I remained just as drab.

I tried to get boys to like me, offering to suck their dicks, but convincing them to take me up on my generosity was a lot harder than it sounds. Blonde I may be, but guys didn’t just want a blonde; they wanted a good-looking blonde, preferably one with tits so big that they could be used as a flotation device. Well, finally I managed to get one desperate, slightly drunk band geek to take me up on my offer: I ended up hating the experience. He kept trying to push himself down my throat, and he tasted bad. Afterwards, when I asked him if he would do the same for me, he told me to piss off.

I must have gargled half a bottle of Listerine that night.

Finally, I went to the Prom as a junior (I wasn’t invited or anything, I just showed up), and after over a half dozen cans of Miller, I passed out (did I mention I can’t hold my liquor too well?) The following morning, I woke up in the back seat of a Toyota Corolla, next to the band geek whose dick I sucked. I was massively hung over… and pregnant.

Well, my dad was none pleased, and soon found myself forced into marrying the hook-nosed creep I had slept with. We both resented each other, every moment of our life together, from when our son was born, to moving into our shabby little corner condo. I worked for several years at the Dollar General, volunteering at the library, before I landed my job at my dreaded middle school.

Now, I know I’ve been talking for a while, and you’re probably wondering what the hell this has to do with my trying to be a serial killer. Well, I’ll you. I mentioned earlier that I would imagine all kinds of grisly scenarios in order to keep my cool.

Well that didn’t start in Middle School.

That’s been going on my whole life.

One of my earliest memories was my grandfather slaughtering a pig. He owned a hog farm, and was showing my brother and I how to slaughter a pig. He strung the squealing hog up by its feet, cracked it over the head with a rubber mallet, then took a large butcher’s knife, and slit his throat. Warm, salty blood splashed my face, dripping down my neck onto my chest. I was four years old. Ever since then, I’ve had what some less enlightened beings would call a morbid obsession with violence.

What they have all failed to realize, is that violence can be quiet beautiful, if it’s done right. For example, while I will never claim that road kill is art, I find that bloodsplatter is far interesting that anything Jackson Pollock did. And consider this – a lot of serial killers had an artistic side to them. Charles Manson (although he was more of a cult leader than a serial killer) wrote messages in blood, and arranged his victims in different positions. John Wayne Gacy painted pictures of Disney characters while in prison. Even Ed Gein, the Pyscho of Plainesfield whose necrophilic, cannibalistic exploits inspired movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, used his victim’s bones and skin as home décor.

You see, all three men had an artistic side – you just have to be able to see it.

As for me, in my years spent at the library, I would spend time reading up on the exploits of the Zodiac Killer, Richard Ramirez, HH Holmes, and Jack the Ripper. I looked up websites on crime scene photography, and watched TV shows like Dexter religiously. And I would be lying if I said it didn’t turn me on.

I had reached a point in my life where I knew I needed a change in my life. My bore of a husband spent most of his waking hours drunk, and my ungrateful son, now 17, was always off with his slutbunny “girlfriend”. What did they have in common besides fucking anyway? I was sick of my job, sick of home, sick of life in general, why I was struck by an idea: why not put my love of murder to work? It would be just the thing to liven things in my horrid life. I would become a serial killer, and I would pour my soul into it.

There were, of course, a few issues to resolve first.

Firstly, who to kill?

Secondly, how to kill?

Thirdly, how to dispose of the body?

 I would get to the “who” later; as for how, I thought back to my childhood, thinking back to that memory of my grandfather’s hog farm, with the blood on my face. That held the answer. And as for disposal of the body, well, since I was setting out to be an artistic murderess, I would leave the body for someone to find. Now that all that had been decided, all that remained was, “who”.

Ultimately, after much deliberation, I decided upon the middle school’s science teacher, Victor Crepsley. He was a skinny, pale man with large ears and receding dark brown hair, who always wore wire-rimmed glasses.

Why him?

Two reasons.

First, was his name. Victor always struck me as pretentious, and as for Crepsley, what the fuck kind of name was that? Sounds like some kind of fungus. Terrible name.

Secondly, and more importantly, because I liked him. We always got along just fine, he always greeted me cordially, always had a pleasant smile on his face. I figured if I started with someone I had nothing against (except his name), the police would not suspect me in his death. Now, all that was left was actually killing him.

I knew, as did everyone, that he often worked late hours preparing for the annual science fair, sometimes as late as 1:00 AM. I knew this would be the time to kill him. After making all the preparations, I walked into his classroom, where he sat semi-conscious over a pile of homework. Silently, I crept up behind him, holding a rag splashed with some homemade chloroform. It’s not hard to make, you can easily get a recipe online.

Seriously, Google it.

I reached around and clamped the rag around his mouth and nose, holding it tightly in place, even as he struggled and kicked. Finally subdued, I dragged him to the gym, where so much of my childhood torment had happened. I had already used some gym equipment as part of my set up.

 I stripped Crepsley naked, gagged him with duct tape, bound his hands and feet and strung him up by his wrists. I had a pitcher of ice water waiting, which I used to shock him out of his drugged sleep. Crepsely bolted awaking, trying to scream to scream through his gag. Apparently, the sight of little ol’ me, not more than 5 foot 8”, holding a claw hammer and butcher’s knife, is pretty fucking terrifying.

I remember him trying vainly to scream for help through his gag, his eyes, now free of his glasses, pleading for mercy. I raised the claw hammer and, taking careful aim, gave a sharp blow to his skull. I can still feel the tremors of impact shaking my arm, the loud CRACK of breaking bone filling the air. I kept whack away at his head, chunks of skull tossed about aimlessly. Finally, I felt the squelch of having hit his brain. Satisfied, I set down the hammer, picked up the knife and slit Crepsley’s throat. The torrent of blood hit me full in the face, and as it did, I was surprised to realize I had just had an orgasm.

 I stood there, feeling Crepsley’s blood running my face, down my neck and onto my breasts. I could taste it in my mouth. I had never felt so alive as I did right now. Quickly, I added the finishing touch of partially disemboweling the deceased teacher, scattering his guts across the floor.

Satisfied, I went into the gym’s locker rooms to use the showers. As I stood in the hot water, feeling the blood running down my naked form, I realized that this was what I was meant to do. Serial Killing, that was my true calling. I still felt aroused from the slaughtering of Crepsley, with dark, wonderful feelings coursing through me; I began to touch myself.

*     *     *

            I got back to my house around 2:45 AM, promptly depositing my bloody clothes at the bottom of a pre-dug hole at the far end of the yard. My husband was too drunk to notice me coming home. I slept soundly that night, more soundly than I had in a long while.

            When I went to work the following morning, I pretended to be as shocked and as horrified as everybody else. Secretly, I relished watching them all like this, quivering with uncertainty, knowing that the killer (me) was somewhere among them. I set my DVR to record the news broadcasts of the murder – “Teacher found slain in brutal cult killing!”

            Cult killing?

            Really?

             I don’t recall leaving any pentagrams at the scene. I felt larger than life as it all unfolded. To think that all this fuss was because of me, a woman no one had ever given two shits about.

            After two days, I decided that I had had enough rest, and it was time to begin again. I began racking my brains as to who to butcher this time. Perhaps a homeless man, or maybe a cripple; someone who couldn’t get away too fast. But I never got the chance; the following morning, I was arrested for the murder of Victor Creplsey. It seems the great mistake I made was that I absent-mindedly wore earrings during the murder, and one was found in the pile of Crepsley’s entrails. It was identified as mine by another secretary, whom it seems Crepsely was fucking.

            The trial was a short, albeit well publicized one. The media ate it up; you know, “Secretary goes Psycho!”, that kind of thing. As I sit in my cell writing this, waiting to be sentenced, I can’t help but wonder if maybe there is a killer in you, dear reader. Maybe you’re not aware of it yet, or maybe you are. If you have that spark of a killer in you, I offer the words of the Zodiac Killer to you:

            “Man is the most dangerous animal of all”. Prove him right, for me, please. Prove him right.

First ever Vlog post

I've never done a vlog entry before, so this is new to me. Hopefully there will be more in the future.

New Years Eve Psychomanteum

On New Years Eve of 2013, I attempted what is known as a Psychomanteum to contact the late John Wolfe of Season of Shadows. This is the experience documented on film.

For those who don't know what a Psychomanteum is, here's a link: