Friday 1 November 2024

Halloween Mop-up!

 



Well last night got a bit away from.  I was travelling back to the parents again,  and yet again the buses were running late.  Seems like they had a good excuse this time though as apparently there was some 'unrest' by teenage kids throwing rocks and setting off fireworks towards buses and police in Edinburgh. 

I didn't see any of ir first hand, but did see the fireworks going off in the distance when I was walking the two miles back from the bus to my parent's house.  I just thought it was people celebrating Halloween!  All a bit weird....

Anyway, there was a few things I meant to talk about yesterday that I didn't get round to, so let's get those out of the way now.....


HALLOWSCREAM

First up,  my brother and a few other artists and writers have been working on the latest issue of Hallowscream, the tribute to an old 80s British comic called Scream! 



Click here for more info on it and the download links!


GRUESOME GAMES

Sorry to anyone who was expecting to see more Gruesome Games this year...I had massive plans to do a huge list again,  but when I started I knew that that would have been too much.  So of course, now I have a much bigger plan!

Starting on January 1st 2025, I plan...that's plan, not promise....to try and post about one horror-themed game a day, over on my other under-used blog, Deadpan Flook's Gruesome Games!  We'll see how that goes....but I thought it made sense to post them over there, as I know some people are just interested in those, and some people in the other stuff I post here.

Maybe I'll still do a couple of 'Best of' posts on here during the Countdown.  Who knows, we'll see if the first part of the plan comes to fruition first!





THE COUNTDOWN AND HEALTH

Well, after worrying about how much I would be able to do, it all worked out pretty well didn't it. I managed to post something every day, and still had time to get around to quite a few of the other bloggers and check out there posts! And there was a lot of great stuff! So give yourselves a round of applause, Cryptkeepers you've done yourself proud!  Special mention should of course go to Dex for taking the reins of the Countdown up this year, and organising the hub, blog lists, etc.  

Thanks Dex!




But yeah, my health managed to not be too bad.....until yesterday of course, when I got hit with a massive wave of stomach-acid badness.  I'd been to the docs a few days earlier as we suspected H-pylori was still kicking around in my sytem from pains I had before the Countdown,  and also yesterday, a test confirmed that it was indeed the case, and i got a text saying I have to make another appointment for next week to arrange treatment.... Blargh!  Oh, and I finally got word from a rheumatologist, but the app they wanted me to use to book an appointment seems to be completely broken, so I'll need to mention that to the Doc too!  Fun times....

* ~ *


And that about wraps it up for Halloween again for me, this year!  I've persuaded my mother to keep the decorations up for an extra night in case we get any straggler Trick or Treaters that couldn't make it last night,  but tomorrow will probably be the start of taking down the decorations for another year.  If it's anything like the last year, though, it won't seem too long at all until we're getting the box o' spooks back out again!

Thanks again to everyone who stopped by, and to anyone who is just starting to look now after a busy month!  Only other people who've blogged before truly understand the work that some posts take, and so it means a lot when you leave me comments.  I'll try and pop by anybody I missed over the next couple of weeks and catch up too!

As long as my health doesn't get too out of hand, I'm also planning to stick around for a bit and post sporadically.  I know I usually disappear for a year,  but the blogging is actually helping with everything else going on with me, so.....yeah, until next time....

Laters everyone!



P.S. Remember to dispose of your Pumpkins sensibly,  and don't just dump them in the woods!

Thursday 31 October 2024

Strange Tales of Yester Year - No.1, Part 3 - Personal Precognitive Dreams

 

'Joseph's Dream', painting by Gaetano Gandolfi, c. 1790


As promised, this post will be about weird premonitions that I've had personally.

Now, if you're going to start reading this, I want you to stick with me.  I've had a long day, and probably in not the best position to be writing posts to prove I'm not insane....and this is probably going to sound like I'm insane, at least to some people.....but stick with it!   I can say that everything I'll be mentioning definitely happened.   There were witnesses that if required I could round up.  But would that make you believe the things I'm going to tell you any more or less?  Frankly, I don't mind.  I know these events took place, and I'm only going to give you the details as they happened in each case.  From those, you can make up your own mind on whether I'm crazy, misguided, weird or just talking nonsense.....

 It's hard to know where to start really.....it's just something I've always been around I guess.  My mother told me when I was quite young about having had dreams that came true,  (I'll maybe save those for a later post) and other people in my family have also had it happen to them...so when it started to happen with me, it just seemed almost normal and to be expected to happen at some point.

Now don't get me wrong...it is still highly odd!  And it always makes me uneasy, but what I mean is, I can't really remember when it started, because it was something unimportant and not really worth remembering....like a Deja Vu type event. "I've done this before" sort of thing.  Only, I was aware I hadn't, and it had been a dream.  Just something like someone saying a specific phrase on a tv program, or some unexpected person showing up that I'd dreamt of the night before...that type of thing.

For instance, there was one occasion when I was at my friend's house, and a whole group of friends were sitting in the kitchen talking, when I realised I had dreamt the very things that were happening, that same morning.  And so I mentioned it to somebody...and told them what was going to happen next.


"Gillian is going to come round the side of the house any second now," I told my friend Kenneth, who was Gillian's cousin, and who wasn't expecting Gillian because she stayed in a different village and had not mentioned any intention to visit.  

Gillian appeared round the corner of the house!

Excited, I told Kenneth what she was going to say when she entered. I can't remember now what it was, but it was something quite odd.  Gillian came in the door, opened her mouth...


......and said something completly different!


This worried me greatly! I thought I had broken the universe by changing what she said. But then it occurred to me eventually that what she had said just been a dream.....things weren't always going to be perfect.


--------------------------


It wasn't until I was a bit older that things started to get really odd. I began to notice certain things about the nature of the premonitions. First of all, was the great, required need to tell someone about the dream.  

I dream often and love sharing my weird dreams with people, but when I have a precognitive dream it's different. I don't want to tell someone about the dream....I have to tell someone about the dream! It becomes a necessity to either tell the first person I see or to write it down so there's a note of it. Something about the dream has a feeling of urgency....

And this brings me to the second feature of the dreams.....the sense of threat!  

Every precognitive dream that I've had since I entered adulthood has been less of the Deja-Vu type affair, and more like a warning of potential threats to my well being.  It is important to mention that these aren't always real threats...just things that could be perceived as such when viewed from a different perpective.  This probably isn't making much sense, so let me try to explain by way of an example....

There was a dream I had where I was with my mother, in a cinema about to watch a movie....suddenly a group of terrorists entered the cinema and started demolishing the place. Trying to escape through the lobby, I was stopped by a big muscley man with a huge hammer.

When I woke up, I wrote the dream down as I had that weird feeling that I needed to.  

Now, I knew I was going to a cinema with my mother that day, so that would definitely be in my head, and might suggest why that would be the focus of a dream...of course this also made me slightly worried about what was going to happen in the cinema!  However, when I got to the cinema everything went as normal...no terrorists entered the building. Everything was okay......

But when the new trailers before the movie started, there was one ( I think it was for a GI Joe movie, but can't be certain) where members of COBRA show up....one of them was a muscley guy with a huge hammer!

Now, I hadn't seen these trailers beforehand, I had no idea what was going to be shown....but this could all still be coincidence...nothing too massively wild.  But it does show what I'm trying to say. A big guy with a hammer could be seen as a threat.  Luckily it was only in a trailer, but I got the impression my brain was trying to warn me of potential danger.

So that's a thing...but how do we feel about it so far?  It's all a bit odd, but is it paranormal?  Not sure, but we could do with better evidence right? 

Well,......

--------------------------


After years of dreams of a similar nature to the one above (perceived but not actual threats that could be just coincidence)  I eventually had the one that I consider the perfect precognitive dream.  Everything about this means that there was no way I could possibly have faked a prediction or expected what was to happen,  and even for it to just be a case of coincidental weirdness seems a bit of a push!  So let me tell you the dream first, and then the real weirdness........

When I was younger, I used to work in a spooky old hotel as a kitchen porter.  For some reason, despite this place having been closed for a few years, in my dream I was back working there.  Something that was very unusal about this dream was that the entire cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were also working there, and I knew them all and they were integrated into my friend group.  But these facts have nothing to do with the precognition.  Like I said, not everything will be perfect......

Towards the end of the dream, I had to get back to the small village I was staying in with my parents which was just a mile or so down from the hotel, and so we all went out and started walking across the fields to get back home.



Suddenly, a huge tornado appeared in front of us, swirling round and round and swaying slightly from side to side....not really progressing very far, but kind of stuck in one position above the woods, still swirling menacingly.

And then at either side of the tornado, another one appeared but farther away so they appeared smaller in view, making a total of three tornadoes.  The big one in the middle, the smaller ones to each side of the main one.


I awoke with a jump, and after grabbing a coffee told my brother and mother about my dream, because I got that feeling from it, and this time it felt really weird.  And being in the UK and not in a tornado zone, I was wondering what to expect....


A couple of hours after I got up, the phone rang upstairs and my mother shouted down to me that a friend I hadn't heard from for a while was calling, and so I went to take the call.  It was my old best friend Alan,  who had got married a couple of years earlier and moved which meant we saw a lot less of each other.  He was calling to say that his wife had taken ill, but they were supposed to be going to see the band 'Texas' in Glasgow, the band's home town, for the first night of their new tour, and being a huge fan he didn't want to miss it, but didn't want to go alone.  So he wondered if I would like to go with him instead.

It seemed like a good excuse for a catch up and as I don't mind Texas myself, it was pretty much a no brainer to say yes to a free ticket and a rare chance to hang out!

A few hours later and we were at the concert.  The support band had come on, and we decided to go get some drinks in before the start of the main show.  At the bar, I decided to tell Alan about my weird dream, as I still had the urge to tell absolutely everyone I saw in case it was to be relevant.

As we headed back to the stage, I was just telling him about the tornadoes and then mentioned the fact that it was one of those dreams I felt I had to tell everybody about, just as the lights dimmed for the band to appear and start the gig.




A huge curtain pulled back from the stage and a big giant TV screen flashed on with a single image.  A tornado,  swirling round and round and moving from side to side.  I looked at Alan.

His jaw had dropped and he pointed to the side of the stage where a smaller screen showing the same image was descending, and then another one at the other side appeared.

Three tornadoes, spinning and swaying, but stuck in their places.  One big huge one, and two smaller ones,  one at each side, that could have been in the distance if they were real.

"You're weird" Alan said, and just shook his head with his jaw still wide open. We watched the concert, and enjoyed it, but my mind was kind of just blown at the oddness of it all, and the journey home was just a bit quiet..Alan didn't really want to dwell on what had just happened.  "You're weird" just seemed to be the general thing to say to me whenever it was brought up.....

But now we have something a bit more odd, don't we.  There was no way I could have known where I was going to be that night.  I had had the dream before Alan phoned, and I wasn't expecting to hear from him at all.   His wife who was supposed to be there was become ill,  so it's not even as if Alan knew I was going to be there.  There was literally no way I could have known I would be going to see Texas.  

It was the first night of their new concert, so I had no idea there was going to be one screen let alone three.  No way of knowing that they would choose a tornado as the first thing to show.   No way of knowing it would be one big tornado repeated on two smaller screens.

But as always, there is a problem.  The only witnesses to this event are people I know.  Anyone willing to accept that this is a thing that happened has to believe that the witnesses aren't lying for the sake of the story.  I would say "Why would they?" but I know that won't be enough for a lot of sceptics.

But I know that for me,  and a few select people I know,  it was a truly weird and spooky experience!  And bizarrely, a few years later, I would have another weird experience...this time even spookier, and again involving my friend Alan in some capacity.....but with one huge difference.  This wasn't a premonition at all,  but something that was happening very far away at possibly exactly the time I was experiencing it in a dream....

....but that, is a tale, for another time...........


* ~ *


Well, I hope you read that with an open mind, and don't think I'm too weird or anything now....as I said, believe it or don't, it makes no difference to me. It's definitely something that has become something of a passion for me now, as I want to know how and why it happens, having experienced it myself.  

 If  I'd had more time I would have gone into detail about the even weirder, far scarier and downright freaky and unsettling stuff I hint at in the end of the post, but 

1) I'm still slightly hesitant to talk about it and 

2) I didn't "forsesee" the troubles I'd have with bloody buses trying to get back to the parents for Halloween!

Anyway, with this...that's another Halloween over! Congratulations to everyone for making it to the end of another Countdown to Halloween!  There's still plenty of stuff to go look at on everyone's blogs...I've got some catching up to do myself! Go click one of those Countdown badges!!!

All that remains is for me to wish everyone the very happiest of Halloweens, and to say that I'll be back on the blog very soon! Tomorrow in fact, as what with being late today there are still a few things I promised I'd post that need mopped up!  Hell, why not just keep things going until Creepmas, eh!? (Better not get too ahead of myself!)  Anyway, join me tomorrow for some more spooky shenanigans!

Laters, Stuffers!


Cinema of Stuff presents.....Leap in the Dark!



 I think I covered Leap in the Dark in a previous post on here somewhere, putting up a few episodes.  I've since discovered more episodes though, so thought I would share!  The series was broadcast on British TV on BBC 2. It ran for 4 seasons - in 1973, 1975, 1977 and 1980 - with a total of 24 episodes. The first-season episodes were all documentaries, seasons 2 & 3 were presented by Colin Wilson and consisted of docudramas re-enacting real-life cases of paranormal occurrences, and season 4 was when the series changed and decided to just do original dramas, including episodes written by Alan Garner, Fay Weldon, and David Rudkin. Only the pilot episode remains from season 1, with the rest falling foul of the BBC's tendency to write over all their old master tapes, which has seen many classic series being lost forever.

The episodes I'm sharing today are all docu-dramas from Seasons 2 and 3, and are all quite interesting if you're into this sort of thing.....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The Vandy Case

(Ghosts)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Undercurrent

(Precognitive Dreams)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Parlour Games

(Telepathy)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The Ghost of Ardachie Lodge

(Ghosts)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Fetch

(The story of Émilie Sagée, who seemed to be capable of bi-location/ producing a doppleganger)



* ~ *


Definitely worth adding these to your Halloween watch list!  I wish they still made stuff like this...well, I mean they sometimes do, but nowhere near as often...

This will not be my only post today...I have another two or three lined up, but if I remember right, they should all be stuck together like one big post by the end of the day, which means this will appear at the bottom...so I'll put the link to the Countdown Hub here! Click the badge below for the last time this year to be magically transported by Ye Interweb to the Countdown to Halloween Blog, where you can find a list of all this year's participants...

Keep an eye out for more posts throughout the day!






Wednesday 30 October 2024

Hallowe’en e’en! (A wander around North Berwick)

 



So, Hallowe’en is short for All Hallows Evening right? Meaning the eve before All Hallows Day….

So does that mean today is All Hallows Evening, Evening? Or Hallowe’en e’en?


Whether it does, or it doesn’t we’re running out of time for festivities anyhoo!  Just as well then, that I went round my fair town of North Berwick (famous for, among other things, it’s witches) and found some suitable decorations!  There seems to be a bit less this year, which is a shame, but they finally put the Pumpkins in front of one the churches today, which after last year’s display I was happy about! Here’s a look at what I found….



First up,  right beside where I have my coffee in the morning when the weather allows me to go sit by the beach, were this little lot of pumpkin friends!



This one seems very happy!


And I don’t want to tell this one there’s no glass in his spectacles….maybe it’s just a Halloween costume?



Next it’s the bunch at the church…which, perhaps surprisingly, look way more mischievous!



Definitely more of a harvesty feel with this lot too!




That hairy pumpkin reminds me of Bobby from King of the Hill….



These are definitely the pair not to mess with….look at those toothy grins!




This one does seem to be spitting out a skull though….or is that just the skull’s hat…..This is just weird….


Oh, is that a pumpkin bird hiding in the basket?  That’s cool if it is! 


Anyway, next I had a specific place I had to visit, but on the way, I found this, randomly outside an art shop I can’t remember seeing before…



This weird pumpkin witch and her cat!




Here’s a wider shot so you can see her awesome shoes.  Also there is an owl….




I get the impression the owl just happens to be there all the time though, and isn’t specifically for Halloween…it’s still pretty awesome though! He gives me Bubo from Clash of the Titans vibes!




Ah, and now we’ve made it to here….what’s this place, I hear you ask….doesn’t seem very halloweeny…




In fact, it’s the ruins of an old church…..still not very spooky though.. (wait, did that say murder?)….








Inside is maybe a bit spookier, but still doesn’t show why we’re here for Hallowe’en…

…until you turn and face the other wall…




Witches!  Yes, this is where the famous North Berwick Witches were supposed to have gathered to meet the devil, and sing songs meant to sink a king…




Of course, whether they did or not is open to question….but some of the people who were tried as witches were my ancestors, or at the very least, relatives of my ancestors….but that’s a story for another time….oh yes, quite the story….


Here’s some more pics from the church ruins…




This view above is of the green at the back of the church, where the witches supposedly danced and fornicated…..Vincent Price done a bit about them and everything, on one of his albums..The Witches Reel was the name of the track…terrible pronunciations and all! Here’s a better version of the “Witches’ Reel” with correct pronunciation and a bit of music too!






This pic shows North Berwick Law, the old volcano that shadows the town….there’s a big whale Jawbone on top to make it all seem a but more Lovecraftian….or at least there was…it’s been replaced with a fibre glass one in very recent times…




And there’s out to sea where the witches were cooking up a storm! The Bass Rock can be seen here….a big plug from the volcano and home to hundreds of sea birds, whose poop makes it shine white in the sunlight!


* ~ *


I hope you enjoyed that little look at stuff around my town….my parents place is also very near to witchity places, which despite being nearly 19 miles away is also connected to the North Berwick witches….and yes, I had witch ancestors….witch, sorry which I will delve into and divulge more of at a later date. Because there’s one who wasn’t a North Berwick witch too…,

Only one day left of the Countdown! As usual, I’ll probably do more than one post tomorrow as I like to have a splurge of spookiness to go out on! In the meantime, catch up with what everyone else has been doing over at the Countdown hub as we all approach the big finale! Click below to head there now…









 







Tuesday 29 October 2024

Dennison's Bogie Book

 


Started as basically a giant advert for their Crepe Paper and what you could create with it, Dennison's started printing yearly Bogie Books in 1909.  Being from the UK, and also not being born until 1977, I never got to experience these wonderful books that give you lots of ideas for parties, decorations, costumes and games to liven up your Halloween experience!

Thankfully, the Internet Archive let me know some of these books were in the public domain, and so presented here is one in its entirity for your reading pleasure! For more information on these, there is a wonderful blog post over at the Food Historian's blog that does a far more impressive job of explaining them than I ever could, so go check that out and then go try out some of these ideas.....just be sure to buy a ton of crepe paper first though!

(Click To Go Big!)


















Look at those costumes!  Also, I think "Old Man Autumn" needs to make some sort of comeback as a thing for Halloween..his leafy face is just amazing!

Do we really only have two days left before Halloween!? Where the heck does the time go?

Best get over to the Countdown hub and check out as much stuff as possible over the next couple of days! Just click the badge below....