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In the gloomy, grim Midwest

One dark October day,

I rode along a hilltop crest,

Past a quarry cold and grey.

It was late that afternoon

And I turned to head for home;

When across the barren dune

I saw a figure roam.

I called to him, but no reply

From that figure reached my ear.

And I could not believe my eye

But then he seemed to disappear!

I started, then, upon the path

Down into the dark ravine,

Shuddering to think what hath

Lain long therein, unseen.

When once I reached the floor

The afternoon to night was turning,

But in the dark, I heard a roar

As of a massive fire burning.

And from the distance came a cry

That left me feeling sickened.

And feeling Duty bade me try

To help, my pace I quickened.

The night wind tore my cloak

As I passed trees all dead and rotten.

The smoky, stony place bespoke

A time long since forgotten.

The wolfpacks bayed and howled

From distant, lonely places,

The tree trunks leered and scowled

With twisted moonlit faces.

When that last fatal bend I rounded

I saw the mighty fire, and the rings

By which it was surrounded

Of leaping, grinning, cackling THINGS.

And at the center of the blaze

I saw that at which they chanted,

A sight I’ll not forget for all my days

And on my deathbed shall be haunted.

I turned and ran, in mindless fear,

My faith and reason torn in half.

As I plunged on, I nigh could hear

Those awful creatures laugh.

Now I try to live what life I can

On my lonely country farm;

A broken, shattered, frightened man

Who lies awake for fear of harm.

I will only go out in the day;

And sometimes, in my room at night,

I think that I can hear them, far away,

As they chant their Diabolic rite.

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scary story

At this time  of year, I like to read scary books, watch scary movies, and play scary games. With that in mind, what follows is a list of some of my favorites of each type. I think I’ve blogged about all of these individually before, but I decided to compile them into a list for a convenient reference.

  • The Haunter of the Dark, by H.P. Lovecraft.  My favorite Lovecraft story.  I don’t know what it is exactly, but something about the setting, and the mysterious pull of the distant church that draws the protagonist’s eye really works for me.  I feel its one of his best for not over-explaining things.
  • The Omen, directed by Richard Donner. (1976) The scariest movie I have ever seen, and the only one that’s ever kept me awake at night. The opening music is, as I’ve said before, absolutely chilling.
  • Green Tea, by Sheridan Le Fanu. There are other good stories–notably Carmilla–in the collection “In a Glass Darkly”, but this is the one that stuck with me.  I like the idea of overdosing on a commonplace drink causing someone to be haunted.
  • The “We Don’t Go To Ravenholm” level of Half-Life 2. I’ve been critical of this game in the past, and even this level has its flaws.  Nevertheless, I have to give Valve credit for putting a survival-horror level in the middle of what is otherwise a sci-fi action game. That’s a great way to do horror: drop it in where the audience isn’t expecting it.
  • The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers. The best example of a “weird tale” I have ever read.  It’s so good that I recommend it even though only the first four of ten stories are actually in the horror genre. They are that good.  “The Repairer of Reputations” is particularly memorable.
  • The Haunting, directed by Robert Wise. (1963) This is cheating a bit, since it’s based on a book.  But the movie is very good.  I didn’t like it when I first saw it, but it’s an acquired taste, and after repeated viewings I came to appreciate how subtle and ambiguous it is.
  • Quake. In terms of game play, this is just a Doom knock off, which means it’s basically all fighting and no suspense.  How does it get on this list, then? Two things: the artwork, though primitive by today’s standards, is very atmospheric and ominous.  And the intriguing level names, like “The Haunted Halls” and “The Tower of Despair” evoke a more subtle fear and deserve better than the mediocre gameplay within.
  • Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore. Did you think I could get through ten whole things without mentioning Gilbert and Sullivan?  You must be new here. Anyway, yes; this is technically a comic opera.  That doesn’t make the scene of the paintings coming to life or the Wagnerian “Ghosts’ High Noon” any less creepy. Gilbert complained that Sullivan’s “ghost music” was too scary for a comedy.  He was right–and that’s why it works.
  • The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce. Horror is what you don’t see and don’t understand.  This story probably packed a bigger punch when it was first written; the concept is old hat at this point.  Nevertheless, it’s still effective.
  • Spec Ops: The Line. I thought long and hard about whether to put this game on here.  Unlike everything else on this list, it contains no supernatural elements… or at least, no overt ones.  And also unlike everything else here, it is in no way “Gothic”.  But it is very dark, very disturbing and above all, a prime example of psychological horror.  It does share certain storytelling elements with The Haunting and “the Repairer of Reputations” and is just bizarre enough that I decided to include it.

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I’ve been playing the game Metro 2033 lately.  (I saw they were playing it on Spoiler Warning, and I realized I should finish it myself before I watched the series.) It’s an interesting game, and appropriate for the Halloween season, when I always try to play as many horror games as possible.

The game is based on a book, which is fairly unusual in itself.  I have not read it yet, but I want to. The post-apocalyptic wasteland setting is pretty played out, in my opinion, but this game does about as good a job as it can making it interesting.  I suspect that the book would be more frightening than the game, though; since most of its scares are of the monster-jumping-out-at-you variety. I wish the game gave you more of a chance to savor the spooky atmosphere of the haunted underground tunnels.

The other problem is that the game uses a checkpoint save system.  This means it’s very easy to accidentally be running blindly through a tunnel, with no gear and no weapons and bumble into a save point from which you cannot hope to escape in your condition, at which point you’ll have to go back and start the whole level over again.

This would be annoying in any game, but it’s dreadful in a horror game.  Nothing kills horror like having to do it over and over again.  I’m assuming the book won’t make you go back and re-read it if you read one section wrong.

That is the problem with horror games. (Well, one of them.)  Ultimately, games are about the player (protagonist) succeeding, whereas the horror genre is about engendering fear and often even a sense of hopelessness. The two goals are at odds.  You have to be very confident to make a game that doesn’t let the player somehow “win”.

Still, it’s a decent game.  It has intrigued me enough that I want to read the book, at least.

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Did you hear about this weird rant by the House stenographer right before the vote to re-open the government?  Very strange stuff:

I don’t know if there’s audio, but according to this article, part of what she said was:

“This is not one nation under God. It never was,” she said. “Had it been … the Constitution would not have been written by Freemasons, they go against God.”

Longtime readers know my mantra: I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but I love thinking about them. This would make a great opening scene for a Dan Brown-esque conspiracy novel.

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Dead Tree at Night

A train whistle blows
And echoes over the forgotten graveyard.
In the dark of night, the West wind
Sweeps across the fields.
What gloomy tidings ride
Upon that ancient gale?
What long dead spirit voice
Cries out from the forgotten forests?
A shape, silhouetted against a sky
Faintly orange with distant city lights,
Moves slowly across the rise.
The colorless leaves fall
From the arms of their decaying towers.
And then the wind subsides,
But a dread chill persists
Upon this haunted land.

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I can’t believe I didn’t hear about this sooner!  I just learned about it this week while discussing our latest Federal government crisis with someone. Turns out that, during the first debt ceiling crisis of 2011, people were considering the idea of the U.S.  minting a platinum trillion dollar coin in order to bypass the Congress’s refusal to raise the debt limit.  Says Wikipedia:

The concept of striking a trillion dollar coin that would generate one trillion dollars in seigniorage, which would be off-budget, or numismatic profit, which would be on-budget, and be transferred to the Treasury… Thus, if the Treasury were to mint one trillion dollar coins, it could deposit such coins at the Federal Reserve’s Treasury account instead of issuing new debt.

Read the article for the full details.  The coin would have to be platinum, apparently, which of course immediately made me think of the “platinum chip”, the central MacGuffin in Fallout: New Vegas. Moreover, the whole concept of sounds like the denouement of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. So, how could I not be interested?

More seriously, I think the fact that this was even considered–and only rejected out of deference to the balance of power rules–shows the extent to which our government is not functioning like it should.  But then, you knew that.

This latest crisis has shown some serious vulnerabilities in the rules governing the operation of the Federal government.  Has our country really never been so polarized that the parties weren’t driven to this kind of thing before?

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I have been reading some of the works of Lord Dunsany lately. He was a major influence on H.P. Lovecraft, and I  can definitely see some traits in him that Lovecraft would adopt in his writing.  I think Dunsany was on the whole a better writer than Lovecraft, but I enjoy the subject matter of Lovecraft’s stories more.

Lord Dunsany. Image via Wikipedia.

That’s not to say Dunsany’s tales aren’t interesting–it’s just that too many of them are pure fantasy, with the attendant tropes of what we would now call “sword and sorcery”, and I don’t care for that stuff.  I guess it’s because it’s hard for me to relate to characters in these medieval-esque fantasy lands.  In general, I prefer horror set in a recognizable time and place that actually exists or existed.  But that’s just my preference, and there are certainly some exceptions.

Not all the Dunsany stories I’ve read are typical fantasy, though.  One that I enjoyed quite a bit was “The Ghosts“.  I can’t quite decide what to make of the story–it is alternately kind of scary and kind of funny.  I don’t know if both of these effects were intentional.  The overall effect is quite weird, but then that is the point of such stories, isn’t it?

 

 

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The internet has been making fun of super-rich Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones because of this picture of him using a flip phone at a game the other day.

I’m not usually one to defend Jerry Jones, mostly because his team has humiliated mine many times over the years.  But I also use a flip phone–it works well enough for making calls, so why shouldn’t I?  Actually, this is probably why Jerry Jones is so rich–by not paying extra for useless stuff, like a phone with lots of superfluous bells and whistles.

Then again, maybe not.

Anyway, I didn’t realize having a flip phone was so weird.  That makes feel extra cool for having one.  It’s probably because I don’t like to talk on the phone–I don’t use it much, so it’s not like I would want to spend a lot of money on it.

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Against my better judgment, I’m in a fantasy football league again this season.  my team is much stronger this year since I decided to abandon my “contrarian” strategy of last year and go the more conservative route of doing what the fantasy experts recommend.

Even so, it’s scary to me how addictive it is.  I never understood how anyone could be addicted to gambling, but I’m starting to see.  You get a thrill when some random player you picked off of waivers does well, and are frustrated when you 1st round pick under-performs.  But it’s not like there’s anything you can do about it.

I suppose it’s more like stock picking than  gambling per se.  There’s some element of skill to stock picking; you have to have a decent grasp of business and the economy to be able to have sustained success.  But after that, both stocks and fantasy football are all about 90% luck.  And when you consider that everybody in my league is reasonably knowledgeable about football, that’s practically the equivalent of it being 100% luck.

Case in point: everyone knew Peyton Manning would, barring injury, be good this year.  He’s been good basically every year of his career.  But it’s not like it was unreasonable to think, back in August, that Aaron Rodgers might be better.  No one could have expected this record-shattering pace from Manning.

It’s an amusing little diversion, don’t get me wrong.  It can make watching the games more interesting.  But from the perspective of a video gamer, who has heard that his pastime is “unproductive” and “a waste of time”, I can at least say that with video games, you can influence the outcome–that seems like it’s a bit more worthwhile then spending time trying to win a competition you have no control over.

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I usually don’t dream–or rather, I don’t remember my dreams–because I sleep very deep.  But last night, I had some very odd dreams, almost all centered in one way or another around a “Halloween” theme.  It’s impossible to say what dreams are about, being so nebulous, so I will only say that my impression of the dream was that it was about Edgar Allen Poe traveling through a place that looked like one of the castle areas from Quake–the sky, especially, was all dark orange and filled with unnatural clouds like those of that old game.  There were other things too, but they are so vague I’ve forgotten them.

As I’ve mentioned before, October is my favorite month, and Halloween is my favorite holiday.  But it’s not like I’d really been thinking about it.  Rather, it was almost like, at some subconscious level, my mind was aware of the changing of the month.  This may not seem weird to you, but to someone who rarely dreams, it’s very interesting.  Reminds me of the quote from Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu:

“[D]reams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.”

Lovecraft drew inspiration for stories from his dreams.  Not a bad way of getting ideas.

I will also say, not to brag, but just as an observation: I wasn’t frightened by any of this, despite the theme.  I didn’t wake up screaming or anything.  As I recall, my only real feeling in the dream was mild perplexity.