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Post by weirdmonger on May 6, 2024 14:45:54 GMT
Strident Cage is my favourite composer. Almost two years on, this still makes no sense to me. Nor me, but I have recently started a new Facebook Group called CLASSICAL MUSIC, NEW AND OLD, FOR THE INNOCENT EAR which is probably just as inaudible. All welcome if you are on Facebook,
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Post by weirdmonger on Apr 21, 2024 18:52:28 GMT
Evocative. Rod Serling wrote a script that was produced for Night Gallery in 1970, titled "Certain Shadows on the Wall," and it was indeed about a haunted wall. Beautifully acted by Agnes Moorehead, Rachel Roberts, Louis Hayward, and Grayson Hall. cheers, Hel. Thanks for that. Sounds very appropriate. I’m still interested in a classic ghost story actually entitled ‘The Haunted Wall’. It seems an obvious title to use.
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Post by weirdmonger on Apr 21, 2024 17:40:13 GMT
Not sure what to say about that AI effort, but thanks for doing the experiment.
Going back to my photo I posted — A modern boy looking down or is it a Mediaeval tapestry? And who or what else? I keep seeing different things, all of them haunting. I hope you think so, too.
And am I right in saying there is no proper classic ghost story called The Haunted Wall?
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Post by weirdmonger on Apr 21, 2024 15:22:01 GMT
A haunted wall I spotted today… I don’t think there is proper ghost story called “The Haunted Wall” —so, who is going to write one to fill in that gap?
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Post by weirdmonger on Mar 7, 2024 10:08:43 GMT
HANGING ROCK, HANGING STONES The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson — my review finished with a few words on its last chapter …. “; I dare you to open your door and come out to see me dancing in the hall of Hill House.” This is the perfect and most poignant climax to the maroon party as the cinematic scene of the hanging iron stairway at last apotheosises Theo and Thee as concomitant with my sense of this book’s mansion as tantamount to a prehensile Hanging Rock. “Theodora was wearing Eleanor’s red sweater. […] ‘We never had our picnic,’…” Review starts here: dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2024/02/17/the-haunting-of-hill-house-shirley-jackson/
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Post by weirdmonger on Feb 11, 2024 18:23:48 GMT
THE TOOTH by Shirley Jackson
“He was wearing a blue suit and he looked tall; she could not focus her eyes any more.”
This is probably one of the most effective anxiety-horror stories ever — pent up and unputdownable. As a woman travels by bus to a dentist in far off New York (why travel so far in such an emergency unless the whole world is tantamount to a dentist-desert as this country is now where I am reading it!) with toothache so painful that it makes her feel ALL TOOTH, and there is many a slip between cup and lip as the stages of reaching her appointment unfolds, while stalked by someone called Jim who seems to dream of places that are not deserts at all!
I felt she was a bodily vehicle for the tooth as the bus was a vehicle for her, and the clincher was that Jim seems to be the same tall man in a blue suit as in THE DAEMON LOVER!
Terrifying! Still is.
I can’t even see my face in the mirror, let alone recognise whether it is still me.
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Post by weirdmonger on Jan 15, 2024 19:14:38 GMT
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Post by weirdmonger on Jan 14, 2024 19:23:35 GMT
L. G. Moberly – Inexplicable: Dream home for sale at give-away price! Much to May's delight, 119 Glazebrook Terrace, Prillsbury, is on the market, and previous owner has kindly included a valuable antique table carved with alligator figures in with the asking price. True, the old place smells a bit swamp-ish, but that'll be the drains - nothing the servants won't be able to put right with a little elbow grease! Problem is, the servants don't stick around long enough to do anything bar scream about evil 'thing's slithering along the floor .... .INEXPLICABLE by L.G. Moberly is the story that FREUD deals with in his essay on THE UNCANNY. I read it today and reviewed it here: dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2024/01/14/inexplicable-1917-by-l-g-moberly/It was a remarkable reading experience, and all the servants of the house slept together to keep themselves safe from the slithering of swamp alligators!!
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Post by weirdmonger on Jan 1, 2024 16:13:06 GMT
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 26, 2023 11:52:21 GMT
'Lot No. 249' in preparation for Lot No. 249. While there are lots of opportunities for scariness, the ending is disappointing - it'll be interesting to see if it's changed at all. Am I the first to notice that 249 is an anagram of BID, appropriate for a Lot in an auction? My review of the actual text of the story LOT NO. 249 by Arthur Conan Doyle dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2023/12/26/lot-no-249-by-arthur-conan-doyle/
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 25, 2023 14:19:01 GMT
'Lot No. 249' in preparation for Lot No. 249. While there are lots of opportunities for scariness, the ending is disappointing - it'll be interesting to see if it's changed at all. Am I the first to notice that 249 is an anagram of BID, appropriate for a Lot in an auction?
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 24, 2023 16:59:12 GMT
A piece for Christmas Eve
The Last Straw in the Stable
Christmas even and crisp, the light of evenings barely beginning to draw out again, curtains pulled together before they should. I left the sitting-room so that a proper guest could occupy it, each room that I occupied being in my rôle of pre-sitter, along the similar lines of some guests needing pre-tasters for their meals. What did they fear about the rooms — be it lounge, parlour, front-room or, of course, this very room for sitting in that gave it its own name? Fearless ghosts like me have been regularly sent into each room to neutralise any fearful ones! A drawing-room, meanwhile, needed specialist ghosts to act as decoys of exorcism for cruder ghosts that would otherwise have haunted it. A dining-room had pre-tasters, too, often in competition for the best armchair. I could hardly be expected to cope with all such duties in the mansion’s various living spaces. Which brings me to counteracting any poltergeist sociability in the drawing-room with all the hoi polloi of Bohemia eager to occupy the seats and easels. Not to speak of the potential interactions in bedrooms and bathrooms. No pre-sitting duties, understandably, were required in the smallest rooms of all. And attics could look after themselves, except, naturally, for pre-squatting duties, upon each Christmas Eve, within the flues that were chimney conduits. This year, I have sadly pulled the shortest sootiest straw of all. I would, of course, have preferred the salle à manger.
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 11, 2023 18:59:52 GMT
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 10, 2023 16:10:21 GMT
In 1988, Mark Samuels edited and published a wonderful magazine entitled: THE STYGIAN DREAMHOUSE. Its contents were original publications of these stories: Metempsychosis – Mark Samuels Connections – DF Lewis Howls From A Blinding Curve – Simon Clark The Dirty Picture – Peter F Jeffery Before God – Steven Samuels As well as an editorial by Mark, there was some amazing artwork by Desmond Knight and Steven Samuels.
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 10, 2023 7:25:58 GMT
On further reflection, I was privileged in many ways in the earlier days of my writing and reading activities, e.g. I went to school with Michel Parry and, later, I socialised with Mark Samuels as a friend before he had started writing seriously.
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