Need shapeshifters, bunnyman, abyss,
Graveyards
• Dapper Cadaver This was a Texas story. I wrote it about the same time that I wrote Crypt Curiosity. There was one of those mighty fearsome Texas thunderstorms going on, and I imagined what a dance with death in physical form might be like. This one has taken me yeeaarrsssss to edit it just the way I like it. Well, worth it, I think.
• Crypt Curiosity I wrote this story after a very hot halloween evening in Texas. (I got sunburned. Yes. On Halloween. Unreal.) Towns on the border have weird little rules, like you only trick or treat on one street and only until 5pm. I didn 't know this the first year I was there, and we ended up being out til sunset. I saw the man I describe in this story.
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This was one those October stories I so enjoy writing, and this one creeped me out pretty good. What is most disturbing is how easily that Mantra came to me... almost as if Rhiannon herself had whispered it in my ear. One of the fun little inspirations for this story came from when I was an apartment manager years ago. A woman had stabbed her husband in the chest, she was taken away to jail and he to the hospital, and their two young children went CPS. Ultimetly, if you can imagine, I evicted them. They left all their crap in the apartment and what we found was truly disturbing. The place was absolutely filthy. The children had locks on their door and there was human feces and urine on the floor of their bedrooms. In the master bedroom, we found a two feet pile of pornography magazines carpeting the floor, sex toys and hundreds of snapped pictures. What was most disturbing was what we found in the closet downstairs, which was absolutely nothing, except one pull string light and a dead bulb. When I changed the bulb, I found the walls covered in red crayon with the words "Amy is ugly on the inside." This simple sentence has haunted me forever. So, in Mantra I had Rhiannon write her "truth" on the closet wall. Creepy
“Death's Acre” tells about the career of a forensic hero, Dr. Bill Bass, creator of the famous "Body Farm" at the University of Tennessee-the world's only research facility devoted to studying human decomposition. He tells about his life and how he became an anthropoligist. He tells about the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, explores the mystery of a headless corpse whose identity surprised police.
A 19-year old female from Harford County, Maryland, narrated the story of Black Aggie, the urban legend of an overnight stay in a cemetery. She grew up Christian, and still lives in one of the more rural areas of Maryland with her younger sister and parents, who own and work at an electrical contracting business. Accustomed to hearing many ghost stories and urban legends, she first heard the story of Black Aggie during a middle school slumber party. Late one Saturday night over pizza in our Hagerstown dorm, she was more than willing to share her favorite urban legend with me.
Hunting season had started, and the vast majority of men spent a good deal of time out in the woods enjoying the sport; apparently nothing could disrupt the peace and ordinary in this village. However, shock came when a store clerk found his mother and truck missing upon his arrival to his store. He also found a puddle of blood and traces going back to where the truck originally parked. The traces led the police department to a middle-aged man’s tattered barn. This man, Edward Gein, did not really prove suspicious to anyone in Plainfield. He preferred solitude, and did not mingle with others much. He spent much of his time alone in his barn, and promptly contributed to the peace and quiet predominant in the village, but no one would have ever guessed what this man stored deep beneath his outer semblance. Upon entry to his unlit barn, the policemen made a gruesome discovery.
The Premature Burial is a horror short story with the subject matter of being buried alive. The narrator begins by unfolding various examples of victims who suffered the fate of being buried alive (Poe, The Premature Burial 3). As the story progresses, one learns that the narrator suffers from a medical condition that makes him unconscious for long dura...
Rooms are a great place to unwind and recollect after a long day. They hold precious items and memories, and are the one place we can get away from the world. Bedrooms tend to be a place where we feel at our safest, and where we keep all our personal items. Items that we subconsciously identify ourselves with because they mirror our inner self. In my room, I have items that I feel reflect my inner values. However, it did take me quite some time to find these items among my family’s things. Just as John McPhee states in his essay, “The Pines,” “It was something of a wonder that I noticed the pump, because there were, among other things, eight automobiles in the yard, two of them on their sides and one of them upside down, all ten years old or
“Things in the world even those built by man are so quiet left to themselves…” People futilely fight the decay of life and relationships in an attempt to find beauty and goodness in the world. Joyce Carol Oates masterfully illustrates this theme in her short story “Haunted.” Oates reveals the protagonist Melissa’s desperate struggle with looming forces like the physical environment, her twisted relationship with her best friend, and even the insanity in her own mind.
The teller began describing the legend of what she knows as “Hell House” in Old Ellicott City, Maryland. She told me that it was off of River Road and is currently abandoned and rundown. She had heard that it was a female institute or an asylum for crazy women. She gave me two important details about the history during the time that it was a “female institute.” According to legend, one of the girls staying there committed suicide by jumping off the top of the building. It is said that her ghost has haunted the grounds ever since. The other event during that time period was that—accord...
Within the picture before me, I see myself. I was dressed in all black; black dress shoes, black pants, a black button-down shirt with a sleek black tie, a black suit jacket, black gloves, a black ski mask, and a black fedora to top it all off. I am not entirely sure what I was supposed to be. Was I a mobster, a thief, or even a personification of the night? The date was Halloween and I was sitting on a bench in front of my house, waiting to scare or give out candy to anybody who approached the door. That year, we had not decorated our house as well as previous years; but we still had a few last minute ideas implemented o let people know that they were welcome to approach. There was a rotating red beacon flashing, jack-o-lantern cutouts over the porch light, and creepy music playing loudly. Despite the decorations, not one person came to our house and hardly anyone had decorated for the holiday along my street. I remember feeling disappointment when I realized that nobody was going to¬¬¬¬ come and anger as people walked by our house without a second glance.
“Wow, your house smells amazing!” I exclaimed to my friend Kristi as we sat in her living room. Two years ago, I remember walking into Kristi’s house and taking a deep breath. Every time I visited her house, I relished the pleasant scent floating around her house, so one day I expressed this to her. However, her reply surprised me. “My house doesn’t smell like anything!” she responded. Initially confused, I slowly realized since she lived in her house her entire life, she no longer noticed the smell. This made me wonder if I no longer noticed things in my own life. Sometimes people’s lives mirror this situation. Settling for lackluster lives and sinful actions, they fail to notice problems in their lives anymore. Through “Dare You to Move”
As i tried to run out i heard the creak of th the floorboard as if it was hollow. I carefully stooped down and picked up the floorboards to reveal a cellar floor door. I started to recite prayers for protection “Grant, O Lord, Thy protection And in protection, strength And in strength, understanding And in understanding, knowledge And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it And in the love of it, the love of all existences And in that love, the love of spirit and all creation.” To my unpleasant surprise i saw a lady who look exactly like Aunt Sarah. She was tied up with duct tape on her mouth and rope that wrap around her arms and legs with what seemed to be pieces of hair from Aunt Sarah and dried blood under her fingernails. I tried to get down the ladder as fast as i could as i got to the bottom i heard the front door open then shut and Aunt Sarah's booming voice “Sally! I brought ice cream cookies and cream your favorite.” I took then tape off of the women mouth and she began to cry and repeat “She is coming please help she is coming!” Aunt Sarah heard the noise coming from her room and started walking toward her
Death is a part of life that cannot be avoided. Everyone who treads through the stages of life, at one point, must realize there is no victory in running away from death. There is no hiding from death or fearing it. It will catch you in the end. There is also the fact that time stands still for no one. Life ticks away like the hands on a clock. Edgar Allan Poe, an innovative and ingenious thinker, was one of the greatest masters of suspense and horror in the Gothic literature movement. In his short story, “The Masque of the Read Death”, Poe’s use of setting, theme, and characterization present a gruesome tale that is characteristically Gothic Romantic.
John her husband and her physician wasn't really paying attention to her and her actions like he should’ve so it got a lot worse. Shes locked in this room at the top of the house and is starting to go crazy about the yellow wallpaper that surrounds the room. She is seeing some lady in it crawling around, the lady in the wallpaper is actually a resemblance of her just crawling around looking about as crazy as she actually is in real life.The narrator, john’s wife, was imagining things in that wallpaper. She literally imagined a woman that looked exactly like her, crawling around in the foggy woods. The woman attempts to escape her confinement and the wallpaper by gnawing at the bed, which is nailed down, and peeling off the wallpaper with her fingernails. John let it get that far because he wasn't really caring too much other than he had it set in his mind that she was ok she just needed some rest. She finally escapes into total madness, starts creeping round and round the room on her hands and knees just like the lady in the wallpaper was. Really if you think about is that lady in the wallpaper she was imagining was her
The story unfolds in a rickety colonial mansion described by the narrator plainly as “a haunted house” (Gilman 1) with barred windows and rings bolted to the walls (Gilman 2). These features along with the “horrid” (Gilman 6) yellow wallpaper entrap the narrator and swaddle her in her own madness. As the “woman” (Gilman 6) in the wallpaper takes hold of the narrator’s psyche she grows sinisterly corporal, depicted through the unintelligible sporadic entries. The purpose of the narrator’s journal warps from entries assuring herself of the pettiness of her sickness to entries that confirm and act as horrendous safe haven’s for her unhinged mental condition. Entries like “I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in hose dark grape 'arbors, creeping all around the garden” (Gilman 8) juxtapose nonchalant writing style with dark subject matter in a way that creates a disturbing tone that must be uncomfortably ingested by
“Now that is creepy. Why are my sister’s dolls down here anyway?” I said out loud. “Whatever.” So I just kept walking to the movie room. As I passed the huge closet and enormous fireplace, I was finally in the movie room. “Wow! This basement is huge!” I thought myself. The finale is about to start so I grab the remote for the 100 by 100 inch TV. I turn it on and right away, white black lines go across the screen. I see a hint of red scattered on the TV. All of a sudden, the TV goes all white and I see that there is not red in the TV, it’s on the TV! I then came to the consensus that it is blood! I started to think about the doll. Suddenly, the lights go out and the TV turns black. Reclined back, I struggle to get up. When I got up, my legs are shaking. I sprint up to the light switch. I tried turning it on but the switch was busted. I rushed to the door. I tried the doorknob, but it was locked! “Somebody had to have done this.” I thought to myself. Thoughts started rushing through my head; I was getting anxiety, I start hearing noises and voices. I listen more carefully, I hear the sound of air hockey table turning on and off, I hear the claps of thunder, I hear scratching coming closer! Closer! Closer! Closer! Closer! Suddenly, the creepy overwhelm me; I hear the piano playing by itself! I looked back at the TV in search of the doll. The TV started turning on and off. The doll was
My story started about a week ago. I was heading to bed early, because I was tired from a long day with plans to wake up a few hours before class to review for a test. As I closed my books for the evening and headed to bed around midnight, little did I know something was going on outside.