Don't Wear Us Out, Josh

Last week I talked about the new Umbral Intentions fiction blog starring and written by Josh Rhoads. There was a couple of spoilers, one worse than the other. Just check back, I won't mention the worst one again if you want to know about it. There was a different discussion about the project over at Inchoate Ascendant titled "Don't Jump the Gun, Pants Kicker" about the actual name of the blog. Since I may want to reference it here today you get to be the first to learn that the blog will be titled "On Dark Rhoads" and not Umbral Intentions--to confuse things worse, as also mentioned last week, the blog is for the This Mental Eventide RPG. Now with that out of the way...

The topic of merit today--and this is the lesser spoiler from last time repeated--is pacing the haunting, or how to parcel out the ghostly events. Being a blog places constraints on the story I will be telling that have less to do with the story that they do with how blogging works. This is of course only on some levels. On others it doesn't impact the story itself. Here again I'm giving things away prematurely. The first order of business is setting up Josh. Who is he on the blog? This is something different than who he is in actuality. He could just jump right in with details on the haunting. That doesn't exactly establish him as someone the blog reading public should believe. So, he begins with an introduction followed by a couple normal slice of life style posts. From there he begins to tell his past encounters and then get into posting about them shortly after the fact.

This second stage of story telling is where the issues begin to crop up. First, the blog is scheduled for Saturdays. Obviously all of the haunting incidents will not happen on just Friday or Saturday. This brings about issues of immediacy, and plays into tension. This is a matter intrinsic to blogging versus real-time interactions like Twitter and Facebook streams. It's just like news reporting where you chose an in-depth look versus greater timeliness. The length of each blog post is a further limit--they tend toward the shorter, especially shorter than full scenes in a short story or novel. There is a certain concision and economy. Another issue is that not every post should be about the haunting. This is important to avoid overload or desensitisation to the creepy goings-on. It also plays into the other important factor.

There is also the matter of pacing the haunting itself. It will progress, it will get worse, and more harrowing as time passes. The haunting must escalate. It will have its highs and its lows as far as the amount of activity. It may be cyclical, or it may be dependant on outside factors such as witnesses. Both will be true actually. Then at the same time the lows will be less frequent and less of a reprieve. Likewise the high activity occasions will be more frequent and more extreme.

The idea that witnesses impact the haunting is typical of real cases, especially when said witnesses are intrusive paranormal investigators who come along and disrupt the haunting either with their equipment, their presence, and most often because the entities responsible for the haunting are shy and do not wish to perform for strangers. There are however different new witnesses who can be brought into the situation who have no detrimental effect on the haunting and in fact encourage it as much or more as the original target. That's all I'll say for now.

Mood: teasing.
Music: Catcher In The Rye by Guns N' Roses and Ghost of Perdition by Opeth.

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13 Nights of Hallowe'en 2010: Night #11 Poltergeist II: The Other Side

If you are new to my array of blogs or just have forgotten, my favourite movie of all time, any genre, is the originalPoltergeist. I already told you all about it for last year's Hallowe'en movie. I decided not to repeat myself although there were more than a couple haunting movies previously covered that I could have tackled again. Poltergeist II: The Other Side is a great sequel. It didn't have to be as brilliant, or as beautiful as the original, it just had to keep you involved with the family. It helped immensely that Craig T. Nelson, Jobeth Williams, and of course little Heather O'Rourke returned--and the boy too. With them came Zelda Rubinstein as the absolutely iconic Tangina Barrons. This time the Freelings have moved in with the children's grandmother but the ghosts still want Carol Anne, especially their leader the Reverend Kane played by Julian Beck.

Let's start there, with Julian Beck as Kane. That is one seriously creepy old man. Beck is just absolutely amazing whether it is pretending to be a sweet innocent old codger or the seething, wrathful, fire and brimstone, cult leader unsatisfied even in death to let his followers go. That in itself is also the coolest thing about this movie--the back-story that dovetails so well into the goings on of the previous film. That is likely because Poltergeist II has the same writing team that brought us the original movie: Michael Grais and Mark Victor. Kane has another problem beside Tangina this time out in the form of a Native American shaman played by Will Sampson. Both Sampson and Beck were supposed to have died after working on this movie because of the Poltergeist curse--also Dominique Dunne and Heather O'Rourke--one of the creepiest (false) movie legends.

Mood: inspired.

Music: Halloween by Aqua. MP3s

13 Nights of Hallowe'en 2010: #2 Ring Around the Rosie

Tonight's movie is Ring Around the Rosie (2006). This movie stars Gina Philips, whom you might remember from such horrors as Dead & Breakfast, and Jeepers Creepers. She is joined for most of thefilm by Tom Sizemore. Tom isn't generally known as a horror actor but he gets the occasional parts that diverge from his mostly police dramas and action roles. You may have seen him in Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, and The Relic. Here he plays the creepy handyman to the house Gina's character has inherited, a haunted house, in more ways than one. You might also recognise Jenny Mollen from the final season of Angel. Along with the haunting, and the mystery surrounding it, as if that isn't enough, there is isolation and stranger paranoia. If you think that's a lot crammed in, there's more, but I don't like to spoiler. In any event it's all good.


There is one scene I really wish I could tell you about, but you'll probably know it when you see it. I like the overall haunting elements in this movie. I love the paint job in the house--I want walls that gorgeous red colour. The lighting and shadows are really exciting too. If this were a review I'd certainly rave about Sizemore's character. I've always been a fan of his acting and here it's hard to tell where the writing ends and his acting takes over, but for me his role certainly made the film much more than it would have been on just the strength of the haunting alone. There are shades of Boogeyman (2005) in the movie too. So, you just noticed I didn't mention the director yet. Well that's because this is the only movie listed for his director credits. Pity that, considering I like this little low budget horror--the budget didn't need to be high for the few effects. It runs fine on just acting, story and atmosphere.

Mood: steady.

Music: Spookshow Baby by Rob Zombie. MP3s

The Horror Few See

Horror is all around us, yet much of it is not seen that way. This is not a new conceit, not even for me to speak of it per se. The example that prompted me to write about this topic today was the young girl from M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. If you have not seen the movie all of the way through you want to stop reading now. I am going to spoil the ending.

Everyone knows the immediately scary bits in Signs. There is the alien skulking around the farm, the one caught in Reddy's house, the video from Brazil, and of course when the aliens try to get into the house culminating in the attack by one of the aliens. The demise of this alien is set in motion long before it's arrival in the house, long before its likely arrival in proximity to Earth even. For whatever reason, miracle, born with a hypnotic suggestion from her mother, or psychic precognition ability of her own, Bo Hess set all of those glasses of water everywhere in the house. I've never seen mention of the pure creepiness of this methodical, instinctive--or we are left to assume it wasn't thought out--process. Think about it. For years this little girl has been finicky about her water. Things start getting weird at the farm and around the world, and she begins obsessively leaving the water in glasses everywhere.

Somewhere between the unblinking irrational quality of the obsession and the inevitability with which it was perpetrated and then exonerated lies the real horror to this situation. It's easy to sit back and consider that the whole scenario is, well, almost heart warming. For starters it saves Merrill and Morgan--though Morgan also has his own deal going--and it's just a part of the overall miracle. Bo is cute, though on the odd side of cute given her I saw a monster can I have a glass of water in the middle of the night attitude. Back to Morgan for a moment. His asthma is a saving grace finally, but it lacks all of the qualities that make Bo's hand in the events so outré, so unnatural. It's like comparing luck to brilliant forethought ten steps ahead of the crucial event.

Here's a final thought to ponder, would it be creepier yet to discover Bo knew the importance of having that water there at that time and hid it all those years behind an intricate web of what essentially are lies and misdirection?

Mood: thoughtful.

Music: Gonna Buy Me A Dog by The Monkees and Breathless by Quiet Riot.

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Things That Go "Boo!" In the Night

It always comes back to the ghosts doesn't it? The only thing maybe more prevalent is next blog's topic, but let's not get into that now. As to our haunting staples they just have so much to offer. There is the instant creep factor. The stereotypical ambience surrounding them is always delightful even when it's full-on cliché—well maybe. However, what sets them apart is the sheer breadth of ways in which they can be put to use.

First and most obviously a ghost can be the focus of the story. They can be on the side of the protagonist or they can be the antagonists directly. There are those rare cases where they are the protagonist, but that is most often a secret that is revealed during the climax or somewhere in the dénouement. Other times rather than a direct involvement they can still exert huge influence on the story when they take on the role of narrator.

Ghosts can play a part as a secondary element to a story. This role can be as a distraction, as misleaders, or as a plot twist. The best twist is often of a similar vein to the role of a ghost as protagonist. Some key character just turns out to be dead. The mood and setting of the story have to be right or it comes off as silly. However, when done correctly, the big reveal can be anywhere from satisfying to downright powerful.

Putting ghosts to use as a purely mood enhancing thing is perhaps the most exciting use of them from the standpoint of having great familiarity with them, or other overexposure to those types of stories. The mood is not the only thing affected in such cases—and they are few and far between, but out there nonetheless—but also it sets certain conventions (rules) in the readers' minds, and carries other advantages of similarly definitional types.

Mood: fatigued.
Music: Loco by Coal Chamber and Twist My Sister by Murderdolls.

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Creepy Crawlies

Was there a point in our history that giant insects and spiders besieged us? It might be easy to imagine so given the level of fear these little beasties of the animal kingdom bring to us. Then again, some of the biting and stinging ones would give good enough reason to be leery them. Anyone who has ever been stung by a bunch of hornets over and over would certainly deserve their fear. Such things aside, is there anything beyond weirdness of form that leaves people afraid of the creepy crawlies?

Certainly as far as appearances go, insects and spiders represent something very different than other animals that we see. Their designs are foreign to us; multiple limbs, hard shells, strange or multiple eyes, and the aforementioned stingers and fangs, and let's not forget antennae. For the longest time these creatures had to represent the unknown as much as anything, and we know fear of the unknown is the worst.

Knowledge of the workings of the anatomy and even the thought processes of insects and spiders has not lessened the fear any. One area of knowledge about them has actually made the fear worse. The fact that we know they can be carriers of terrible diseases, and be the cause of other forms of sickness hasn't waylaid anyone's bad impressions of them.

This is added to the fact that in some ways insects have been competitors in the food arena, in that at least they love to eat the things that we do. Anyone who has ever opened a box of cereal from the cupboard and found a hundred or more ants running among the flakes knows this all too well. This all leads back to the original hypothesis, or a parallel of it. There is one type of actual besieging, the locust swarm devouring the crop fields. Seeing that firsthand must be quite the horror, a living cloud, hard bodies blotting out the sun, scouring the land, leaving it barren...

Mood: springy
Music: Be the Ball by Slash's Snakepit and One Tin Soldier by Me First & the Gimme Gimmes.

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