Weeks #514-517: "haunt" and/or "scare" is coming to a close!
Nov. 1st, 2025 07:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
squidgiepdx posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sga_saturdaybrumeier gave us Walk in Darknessgoddess47 gave us A FootHold Situationlucy_roman gave us How to Explain Halloweenmific gave us Scared and THree Scary Drabblessgatazmy gave us Thumping, Screeching, ProwlingA new prompt will be coming soon! Meanwhile, if you're delayed for some reason in posting for this period — like you'd love to finish your story but you're having to fight off zombies or something — it's cool. Just let me know, and you can scoot in past the deadline - which is Sunday, November 2nd.
Books read, late October
Nov. 1st, 2025 09:36 ammrissaPhilip Ball, The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China. A history of China through its rivers. And other water, but really mostly rivers. Gosh they're important rivers. Some of it was more basic than I hoped, but the part where he talked about the millennia-long conflict between the Confucian and the Daoist views of flood management--that's the good stuff right there. That's what I need to think over.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Testimony of Mute Things. Kindle. A neat little murder mystery fantasy novella, earlier in the Penric and Desdemona timeline than most of the others in the series. I really like that Lois is feeling free to move back and forth in the timeline as fits the story she wants to tell.
Traci Chee, A Thousand Steps Into Night. Demons and time loops and complicated teenage relationships with oneself and others, this was a lot of fun.
Max Gladstone, Dead Hand Rule. The latest in the Craft sequence, and hoo boy should you not start with this one, this is ramifying its head off, this is a lot of implication from your previous faves bearing fruit. I love middle books, and this is the king--duly appointed CEO?--of middle books, this is exactly what I like in both middle books generally and the Craft sequence specifically. But for heaven's sake go back farther, the earlier Craft novels are better suited to read in whatever order, this has weight and momentum you don't want to miss out on.
Rebecca Mix and Andrea Hannah, I Killed the King. A fun YA fantasy murder mystery, better as a fantasy than as a murder mystery structurally but still a good time with the locked room and the suspects and their highly varied motivations. Are we seeing more speculative mysteries? I kind of hope so, I really like them.
Lauren Morrow, Little Movements. This is a novel about a choreographer who gets a chance to work slightly later in life than would be traditional, of a group of Black artists who deal with insidious racism, of a woman who has miscarried and is trying to put her life and identity and romantic relationship back together. In some ways it's a very straightforward book, but also it's a shape of story I don't think we get a lot of, the impact of being all of the people in my first sentence at once. It's a very intimate POV and nicely done.
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation. The authors were journalists in Russia early in the Putin era and had a front row seat to watching people they respected and trusted become mouthpieces for Putin, and this is that book. Unfortunately I think some of the answer to "how could they do this" was that many of them--as described by Soldatov and Borogan!--were already those people, and Putin gave them the opportunity to be those people out loud. I was hoping, and I think they were hoping, for more insight on how someone could become that person; what we got instead was insight into how some people already are and you don't necessarily know it clearly. Which is not unuseful, but it's not the same kind of useful. Anyway this was grim and awful but mostly in a very grindingly mundane way.
Serra Swift, Kill the Beast. Discussed elsewhere.
Amanda Vaill, Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War. Amanda Vaill does not like Ernest Hemingway any better than I do, bless her, but when she picked her other subjects in writing about a group of journalists and photographers in the Spanish Civil War, she was apparently kind of stuck with him. Did that mean she learned to love him? She sure did not, high fives Amanda Vaill. Anyway some of the other people were a lot more interesting, and the Spanish Civil War is.
Jo Walton, Everybody's Perfect. Discussed elsewhere.
30 in 30: Transformers (Bayverse/Bumblebee)
Nov. 1st, 2025 09:32 amsenmutChapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bumblebee [2018], Bayverse Transformers
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Charlie Watson [Bumblebee], Mikaela Banes [Transformers 2007]
Additional Tags: First Meetings
Summary:
Charlie may run her own company, but she still believes in running her own errands.
She gets to meet someone else who is a gear-head like she is.
New Opportunities
Charlie pushed over the counter at Harry's and looked at the man on the floor. "Nap time, really?"
"Hadn't had a customer all day," the man said, pushing his hat back and slowly sitting up. "Thought you had a job."
She laughed, shaking her head. "I'm the boss and the owner, and yet. When I need parts, I come to you, my old friend."
He brought himself up, and started to say something… but the door opened and this time he heard the jingle. Both of them looked over to see and hot body with grease and overalls trying to hide the fact.
"Mikki, haven't seen you in forever!" Harry called.
"Yeah, been out of town, but got my dad's garage back and running."
"Harry, you been holding out on me? You know I like investing in gearheads like me," Charlie said to that before walking over. "Charlie Watson."
Mikki's eyes went huge. "THE Charlie Watson, dive champ and motor innovator?"
"So usually it's one or the other, so kudos to you."
"Mikaela Banes," Mikki offered. "Harry gets away with Mikki, but Mik is what most of my friends use these days."
"Well, I hope to earn that right, Mikaela," Charlie said, offering a business card. "I've got to get a few things, but give me a call?"
"I'm here for parts, and have a car on lifts, but yeah, I will."
Books with Investigative Documentary Crews?
Nov. 1st, 2025 02:03 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
horrorlitreddit_feedI am a sucker for a mystery, especially when it’s being explored by a documentary crew (for some reason). The Lost Village, Wylding Hall and From Below were very enjoyable reads. I tried to read Episode Thirteen and really didn’t like the format.
Got any similar recommendations?
[link] [comments]
Ipswich Devil’s Footprint in Ipswich, Massachusetts
Nov. 1st, 2025 10:00 amatlas_obscura_places_feed
Ipswich is a relatively small town on Massachusetts’ North Shore, known primarily for its fried clams and salt marshes bordering the coastline. Like many towns in the state, Ipswich has a long and rich history, but one piece of local lore stands out as particularly unique. According to legend, the Devil once visited Ipswich in the 18th century.
The First Great Awakening was a major religious revival that swept through Britain and the Thirteen Colonies during the 1730s and 1740s. One notable preacher of the era was Reverend George Whitefield, a man of small stature who was notably cross-eyed but had a loud, booming voice and delivered sermons with exceptional passion and fervor. In 1740, Whitefield traveled to New England and stopped in Ipswich on his way to Maine. A crowd of thousands gathered to hear him speak, and since there was no room left inside the First Church of Ipswich, he set up a stage outside. There are many variations of the legend about what happened next, but all follow a similar story.
As Whitefield delivered his fiery sermon, a mirror inside the church shattered. Superstitions at the time held that mirrors could serve as portals through which the Devil might enter the human realm. Supposedly, the Devil had been listening to Whitefield’s sermon, and his words were too powerful to bear. The Devil leapt out of the shattered mirror and startled the crowd outside. He and Whitefield engaged in an epic confrontation that culminated with the Devil fleeing into the church, pursued by Whitefield all the way up to the belfry. There, Whitefield commanded him to leave with his booming voice, and the Devil jumped down onto the rocks below, landing on one foot before hopping—or flying—away, never to be seen again.
Today, directly outside the church, there’s an impression on the rocks outlined by a faded green circle marking where the Devil allegedly landed. It’s become an iconic piece of Ipswich history and is even depicted on a large mural along the Ipswich River walkway. Did the Devil really visit Ipswich and face off against George Whitefield, or is this just a colorful story to explain a peculiar geological formation? You decide. Either way, it’s a unique spot, and perhaps you might just catch a glimpse of the Devil watching from the mirrors nearby.
Detective Folk/Urban Horror Recommendations
Nov. 1st, 2025 12:59 pmhorrorlitreddit_feedI'm looking for books with a supernatural bent that have the same vibes as Deliver Us From Evil, The Wailing, Se7en, Memories of Murder etc. Something where ordinary people are solving a crime scene but it turns out to be ghostly/creature feature/supernatural.
[link] [comments]
Seaboard Air Line Railroad Turntable in Raleigh, North Carolina
Nov. 1st, 2025 09:00 amatlas_obscura_places_feed
Built in 1909 for the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, which operated from 1900 to 1967, this railroad turntable is one of the few remaining such structures left in the U.S. What makes it even more rare is that it is still operational and occasionally use by CSX and the NC DOT in their operations.
The turntable originally included a “roundhouse” that was used to house locomotives while maintenance and repairs were conducted. The roundhouse was demolished after a series of devastating fires, but the foundations of the original roundhouse remain adjacent to the turntable.
The turntable can be found near Capital Blvd and Peace St, but it is not easily visible despite its size. The best ways to view the turntable are from an adjacent building (if you have access), or from the air using a camera drone. On foot, the easiest way to see this structure is to park at a nearby building and walk to the turntable via the railroad tracks. However, be aware that these are active railroad tracks, there are numerous homeless encampments along the tracks, and that traversing the tracks is considered trespassing.
Books Received, October 25 — October 31
Nov. 1st, 2025 09:18 amjames_davis_nicoll
Five works new to me: two horror, one and a half science fiction, one half fantasy, and one TTRPG that's hard to classify. Two could be said to be series works.
Books Received, October 25 — October 31
Which of these upcoming books looks interesting?
Dreamland by Olivie Blake (August 2026)
2 (33.3%)
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey (May 2026)
2 (33.3%)
Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume Three edited by Stephen Kotowych (October 2025)
1 (16.7%)
Palaces of the Crow by Ray Nayler (March 2026)
2 (33.3%)
Outgunned Adventure by Riccardo“Rico” Sirignano & Simone Formicola, with art by Daniela Giubellini (October 2024)
2 (33.3%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
5 (83.3%)
Things learned in October
Nov. 1st, 2025 02:31 pmtinny( 15 things I learned in October )
HAPPY NOVEMBER!
Nov. 1st, 2025 09:10 ammarcicat2. LET'S WRITE!!! I'm going for a half-nano this year (25,000 words), and so far I have... ::checks file:: 183 words. Okay, that's a start!
3. Tis the season!
FrightFest Halloween Review – Dolly
Nov. 1st, 2025 12:46 pmkimnewmanalucard_feed
FrightFest Halloween Review – Dolly
In a decaying mansion in the woods lives Dolly (Max the Impaler), a hefty, superstrong woman who wears a chinadoll mask with only one glass eye – does she see out of the hole where the other eye was gouged? She has a prisoner called Tobe (Ethan Suplee) chained up in a cupboard and an enormous collection of broken dolls, which she has used to decorate the forests – a question never asked in these films is where do all these antique creepy toys come from and how do they fetch up in the collection of a non-verbal maniac who seems hardly the type to order limited edition weirdness from Etsy even if parcel delivery could be arranged without too many mailmen getting mangled.
Into the region come Macy (Fabienne Therese) and Chase (Seann William Scott) on a hiking date – he’s going to propose to her, and though she has a nice rapport with his daughter she isn’t sure she’s ready to be a stepmother … a situation which has been overused in horror films since the Texas Chain Saw remake sprung the discovery-of-the-engagement-ring-after-carnage-has-rendered-it-valueless moment of poignance … though doubts about the roleplay aspect of motherhood feed into what happens to Macy after Dolly has taken a shovel to Chase (no, Scott, the most familiar face in the film, isn’t out of the picture after that, though his face is less easy to recognise) as she winds up in a dolly dress being treated as a plaything in the monster’s lair. Director Rod Blackhurst, who also co-wrote with Brandon Weavil, builds the film around sickly comic bad taste scenes of Dolly playing with Macy – which includes pampering, nappy changing, feeding and when the living doll refuses to go along punishment with a whacking implement.
There are a couple of actual twists and realignments of who’s menacing who and Blackhurst goes all out for the grotty 1970s feel – down to speckling the image as if the film had been dragged through too many drive-in projectors – with imaginative art direction and a few wild elements (like an end credits theme tune in the spirit of HG Lewis’ Two Thousand Maniacs!) … but it still boils down to a hulking thug abusing a woman for long stretches of the film and a sense that the audience is screwed any way you take it – if we think it’s funny, we’re indefensible sickos … if we’re offended, we’re censorious buzzkills … and if we hate watching this sort of scene, we’re in for an unpleasant eighty two minutes. It’s another essay in retro grindhouse, with acknowledged debts to TCM but also nods to lesser-known stuff like Tourist Trap, Just Before Dawn or Criminally Insane.
I love Darcy Coates, but she does not write Americans well
Nov. 1st, 2025 12:07 pmhorrorlitreddit_feedMultiple novels written by Darcy Coates take place in the United States, such as Dead of Winter. Despite depicting Americans, non- American phrases such as “bloody hell” are not uncommon, and the vocabulary is off. She has characters referring to cell phones as “mobiles.” Of course, it doesn’t get in the way of understanding the storyline but it does remove me from the story. I know she’s not American and I’m not trying to be picky but it happens a lot.
Has anyone else noticed this?
[link] [comments]
Book suggestions
Nov. 1st, 2025 11:37 amhorrorlitreddit_feedDoes anyone know of any genuinely scarey books set in a forest. I’ve read the ritual which I loved and hoping for more like this.
[link] [comments]
Film review – Relay
Nov. 1st, 2025 12:13 pmkimnewmanalucard_feed
My Sight & Sound review of Relay is online.
FrightFest Halloween review – Deathgasm II Goremageddon
Nov. 1st, 2025 11:50 amkimnewmanalucard_feed
Deathgasm II Goremageddon
A key character arc in Jason Lei Howden’s Deathgasm (2015) was teenage protagonist Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) realising that his older rebel bandmate Zakk (James Blake), who he idolises, is a selfish bastard who consistently undermines him and is in the end rotten enough to become host to a world-threatening demon. This ten-years-later sequel rather oddly forgets that – when Zakk and D&D loser Dion (Sam Berkley) are raised from their graves as rotting, gut-munching zombies, all that business is forgotten in favour of gags about a zombie who wants to go vegan and a zombie who collects severed penises and wants to take over the world with a fairly thin horde of shambling clods.
What’s something of a downer, in the way The World’s End or It’s Always Fair Weather are disillusioned follow-ups to Shaun of the Dead and On the Town, is that any progress Brodie made in the earlier film is wiped off the map. Dumped by his girlfriend Medina (Kimberley Crossman), who has joined a ‘heart metal’ group fronted by total a-hole Jesse (Kieran Charnock), now thirtyish Brodie is in a slump, on benefits which a sadistic Christian social security minion wants to cut, and now thinks his spell with DEATHGASM (a band) was the best part of his life. He digs out the ‘Black Hymn’ to raise his old bandmates so he can compete in a contest which he imagines will wind up with him getting back together with Medina. Deathgasm II is the story of a loser who is so affronted that a woman has dared to leave him he performs a ritual he knows could have dire consequences – and directly or indirectly causes the deaths of a couple of hundred innocent people (and some drummers). His only living friend is Giles (Daniel Cresswell), a drummer who lost his arm to a demon, and his only actual companion is a metalhead dog who gets eaten as soon as the zombies are about.
It’s beside the point to mention that this is a bad taste orgy of gross-out gags, since that’s pretty much what it said on the tin – I’m not sure if it was to do with the general atmos of FrightFest’s haunted Screen 2, but the auditorium was eerily free of laughter for the whole film. It may be that there are really very few taboo subjects in splat-com and they’ve all been exhausted so it doesn’t matter how much poo, piss, blood, cum, brain matter, slime, rot and porridge you spill the audience has seen it all before. The set-pieces – like the glory-hole sequence in which Giles mangles, severs, hammers and slices multiple penises – are all so contrived they tend to get ho-hum reactions from horrorheads these days. Strangely, what works – and I’ve always felt The World’s End and It’s Always Fair Weather had something important to say – is Cawthorne’s characterisation and performance. It’s a risk to make someone who used to be an underdog hero into a whining narcissist who still presumes everyone will see him as who he used to be and give him a pass – and a bigger risk to build a comedy around a character who is basically impossible to like, though Brodie is also horribly believable amid a cast of gurning cartoons.
FrightFest Halloween review – Primate
Nov. 1st, 2025 11:26 amkimnewmanalucard_feed
FrightFest Halloween review – Primate
At first glance, Johannes Roberts’ latest trapped-by-a-killer-beast picture is a redux for the likes of Richard Franklin’s Link and George A. Romero’s Monkey Shines in that the main menace is a brilliantly-realised murdering chimp – done by very convincing suitmation and mo-cap (Miguel Torres Umba is the performer), possibly to the envy of filmmakers who had to rely on waving bananas offscreen and months of training. It’s main inspiration, however, is Lewis Teague’s Cujo, based on Stephen King’s novel – not a movie which often gets listed as a 1980s classic, though it was a formative influence on Roberts and may well be coming into fashion since this is the second homage to Cujo I’ve seen this week (the other is Game).
As in Roberts’ 47 Meters Down films, we need a reel or so of set-up … Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah, from Dexter New Blood), semi-estranged daughter of a deaf writer (Troy Kotsur, from CODA), comes to spend a vacation at the family’s clifftop Hawaiian home, bringing along some pals (Jessica Alexander, Victoria Wyant) who might as well be wearing Soon-to-Be-in-the-Body-Count t-shirts, and have met cute with a couple of guys on the plane who are even more plainly marked as victims you won’t be too sorry to see go. Lucy has a slight grump to get over with her younger sister (Gia Hunter), who feels abandoned after their mother’s death – but the main problem in the house is Ben, a chimpanzee who has lived with the family and learned to sign and use a vocaliser keyboard. Ben has been bitten by a rabid mongoose – it’s mentioned that there’s not supposed to be rabies in Hawaii as if several drafts ago the film was set somewhere else – and turned not only homicidal but cruelly cunning.
A symptom of rabies is hydrophobia – fear of water – and Ben can’t swim, so when the loved pet’s nasty turn becomes apparent the survivors retreat to a pool which dangerously abuts a deadly drop. Of course, Dad is out for the evening … mobile phones are broken or out of reach … escape attempts fail … and the clock is ticking for one bitten girl who needs her lifesaving shots within 48 hours. Like the 47 Meters Down films, this is a basic exercise in suspense – with a heroine who has to juggle responsibilities and risks as she’s confronted with a big problem. In theory, there ought to be more of a struggle with conscience as Ben has hitherto been a part of the family, but also perhaps taken out of his natural environment by the dead mother … but it’s stated bluntly that ‘Ben isn’t Ben anymore’ and the chimp is just an impersonal big bad like a shark, certainly with less emotional register than Link or Ella (from Monkey Shines). It opens with a major gore gambit and has pretty gruesome business, but it’s mostly in good fun. Solid horror hokum.