Tag Archives: ghosts

Weekly Eldritch: Fantasia / Night on Bald Mtn

This week’s item of creepiness is the Night on Bald Mountain segment of Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia. Now the music by Mussorgsky is pretty dramatically frightening all by itself, so adding a host of demons to the top of said mountain just adds to the scariness.

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Shpooky prompt

Here’s a Monday morning Writing Prompt for you. The only thing better than the craziness of this photo is the name of the movie it comes from: Voodoo Man (1944).

Looks like a seance to me. Who are all these people? And what happens next?

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Weekly Eldritch: Masks

IMGP1304 - Version 2This first photo is an old one I took at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York years ago and unfortunately I don’t have any more info about this creepy devil dog, or devil horned sheep maybe? Actually, I think a devil sheep would be far scarier than your boring everyday demon hound.

There’s really something unsettling about someone covering their face with a mask, concealing their identity and pretending to be someone or something else. It’s just too bad that masks have gone out of vogue at Hallowe’en, for the younger kids anyway, because of fears that their vision will be hampered when crossing the street. Say what you will, face paint doesn’t allow you to disappear into your character quite as effectively as a mask does.

The following photos were taken in the First Nations exhibit at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria.

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Saving the best for last, this one is called “Man Burned by Fire”. Yikes!

How about you? Are you creeped out by people wearing masks?

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Weekly Eldritch

I love learning new words. I love really unusual words, ones that are useful but little known, that roll off the tongue and kind of sound like what they mean. When I came across the word ‘eldritch’ I liked it so much I used it in the title of my novel.

Eldritch

Adjective

  1. unearthly, alien, supernatural, weird, spooky, eerie

    • 1790 — Robert Burns, Tam o’ Shanter
      So Maggie runs, the witches follow,
      Wi’ mony an eldritch skriech and hollo.
    • 1850 — Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, ch VII
      Pearl, in utter scorn of her mother’s attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then became silent.

etymology:  Middle English from earlier elrich, equivalent to Old English el- (“foreign, strange, uncanny”) (see else ) + rīċe “realm, kingdom” (see rich ); hence “of a strange country, pertaining to the Otherworld”; compare Old English ellende “in a foreign land, exiled” (compare German Elend “penury, distress” and Dutch ellende “misery”), Runic Norse alja-markir “foreigner”.

(courtesy of Wikipedia/Wiktionary)

I’ve decided that it might be fun to give you a ‘Weekly Eldritch’ on this blog – just something to creep out your Thursdays a little bit. Today it’s graveyard photos and a spooky link.

The photos I took several years ago in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York (the Bronx to be exact). Both photos are of the same statue. I love the way the original form still shines through no matter how eroded by time, the elements… and air pollution too, no doubt.

Here’s the link – a great list of 10 of the Creepiest Ghosts in Literature from flavorwire.com. I’ve read only four of these (it occurs to me that I probably haven’t actually read A Christmas Carol, but I feel like I know it by heart), and there are a couple titles I’ve never even heard of.

What do you think of the list? Are there any additions you’d make?

And please share whatever eldritch oddities you may come across!

Right. Now I’m off to order The Haunting of Hill House  from my local library…

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