Andersen’s Fairy Tales (1945) was one book we owned that really creeped me out as a child, partly because of the morose stories, but mostly because of the illustrations by Arthur Szyk (1894-1951).
Category Archives: Eldritch
Weekly Eldritch: Miscellaneous Eyeballs
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Weekly Eldritch: O Superman
I’m a Laurie Anderson fan from a way back when, and I was just listening to some old CDs when, as usual, O Superman gave me chills down the spine.
Laurie Anderson was a New York performance artist not well known outside art circles when this song became an unexpected #2 hit on the UK charts in 1981. Her live concerts were truly performance art pieces, using multi-media and plenty of (at the time) cutting edge electronic gadgetry. (I seem to recall she had a keyboard necktie that she could actually play…)
The song makes me think of dystopian science fiction, with the robot voice and cold, dispassionate lyrics. I just wanted to give you the audio file, but couldn’t figure out how to do that, so here it is via Youtube video. Enjoy!
P.S. A few months back I was surprised to hear this song coming over the PA system in my local grocery store. How perfect is that?
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Weekly Eldritch: Solemn Child on Wall
Thursday means time for the Weekly Eldritch, your weekly uneasily creepy thing. This comes from my photo archives… from a secret location in Toronto…
Imagine you are walking down a street somewhere, a street of abandoned industrial buildings, warehouses with broken windows, concrete rubble and scrappy weeds. There’s nobody around, but you feel like someone’s watching you…
I love graffiti! Especially detailed, dead solemn children graffiti. With big eyes and weirdly jointed arms. In a party frock.
Writing Prompt: Tell me about this curious person. Name? Age? History?
Weekly Eldritch: Dead Things in Museums
Apologies for missing a couple of weeks there, I hope Hallowe’en filled in the creepy-things gap for you. Now back to it – my weekly offering of spooky tings, courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
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Weekly Eldritch: Conqueror Worm
Prepare for your weekly creeply: a little Edgar Allan Poe for the Hallowe’en season…
Ivor Abrahams, The Conqueror Worm. Print on paper from the E.A. Poe series, 1976.
The Conqueror Worm
Lo! ’t is a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!
That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
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Weekly Eldritch: Cave Creatures
texas blind salamander
This is my weekly offering of something eldritch, or creepy… Recently we watched an old episode of Planet Earth about caves, and I spent the entire time cringing. Naturally the massive pile of bat guano swarming with cockroaches was a highlight, but all of the inhabitants of caves are a little on the creepy side. Above is the texas blind salamander, click here to see the video clip on the BBC site.
glow worms trapping their prey with strands of spit
sightless cave fish
And of course we can’t forget…
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Weekly Eldritch: Trees with Eyes
Was on a hike last week in the lovely, serene woods when I spotted this:
Eyes watching me! Suspicious character. At least he wasn’t throwing apples. Continue reading
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Weekly Eldritch: Faces 2
Further to a previous post, I keep seeing faces everywhere…
And when you find a face unexpectedly, it’s like suddenly noticing someone hiding. This one in particular was so detailed it just made me jump when I spotted it (Hope, BC):
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Weekly Eldritch: This Girl
For those of you who are new here, eldritch means eerie or creepy, and every Thursday I post something oddly weird as my “Weekly Eldritch”. Today it’s… this girl.
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