Another scary week–even the pup’s picture I took at the Winter Springs Art Festival (if you missed it you missed a great day with lots of great displays in a lovely park setting with no congestion and lots of parking) is spooky—The main picture is of the Lake Mary Museum http://www.lakemarymuseum.com/—more about that one later this week. Honorable Mention today to the Cottage Gift Shop http://www.cottagegiftshopinlongwoodfla.com/ which we visited while wandering about in the historical district of Longwood where we started our day on Sat. http://visitseminole.com/things-to-do/art-culture-history/longwoods-historic-district-walking-tour.
But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares. Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
He doesn’t look scary and his stories aren’t so horribly different, yet I can read King (or any other of that genre at night, alone in bed) and sleep with nary a bad thought let alone a dream. Yet Lovecraft’s books give me shivers in broad daylight in a room full of people. It is my understanding that he went mad and maybe some of those bizarre monsters, who in fact should be just silly, do come across as terrifying and it is so easy to believe that they are waiting just outside your insubstantial glass window waiting for you to sleep and then they crawl into your mind and make your dreams the haunt of creatures which have no earthly place and who’s names are from other times when humans were mere beasts to be hunted and consumed.
I read early on that King had been a fan of Lovecraft and some of his earlier stories are the closest thing to Lovecraft I’ve ever read. King as a pupil did well, but maybe bringing that supreme terror back was not wise or could only be done by someone else that was mad. And King decided to stay good and sane.
| Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds | ||
| Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds | 80 | |
| To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets: | ||
| More needs she the divine than the physician. Doctor/Macbeth |
Thunder storms—those really nasty ones where the noise shakes the house and the light flickers on and off just regularly enough to let you think you might get a reprieve and then hits you again so bright and with such a loud report after that you scream out in surprise–I mean you are too old to actually be afraid of Nature’s fire works—well aren’t you?
Wind (even without the fireworks) Howling through the trees—what a sound the wind can make—like some raging monster, like a crazed person moving about, like an animal from hell. And if you’re close enough you can hear the clicking and the scrapping of the branches—but especially after dark they seem so strange–like some THING out there seeking entry, like something caged seeking escape, like all the bad things you’ve ever read or have seen or been told about trying find a way IN to where you are.
In a horror story, the victim keeps asking why – but there can be no explanation, and there shouldn’t be one. The unanswered mystery is what stays with us the longest, and it’s what we’ll remember in the end.” Alan Wake
Walking along in a dark, foggy street I fear what lies beyond what the light illuminates—what at daylight doesn’t seem possible during the night seems actually probable. What is that partial shadow down that side street which is slowly being enveloped by the moving, crawling fingers of the being we call fog? Getting lost seems so much easier when darkness changes the contours and especially when fog draws ghostly tentacles about it all. I read a story once about London where somehow at night two tourists were exploring in it’s ancient boundaries and they crossed from the present to a past that throw them into a ceremony where they were the victims…and they move through the dark medieval street trying to escape an ancient evil. Let me tell you th when you walk the streets of London at night and the fog begins to drift in, you begin to think that it might not be fiction after all.
I don’t have nightmares; I give them all to you. Stephen King
“It’s hard to wake from a nightmare when the nightmare is real.” ~ Fire by Kristen Cashore
$6.90 USD
I think your nightmares are the gatekeepers to your dreams, really Jason Seigel