Month: October 2023

Oh, the Horror….

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

“It’s Halloween; I guess everyone’s entitled to one good scare.” Halloween (1978)

It is two days from Halloween and my horror has already begun. Someone shared Michael Jackson’s “Triller” and like a dolt I clicked on it. “Cause this is thriller, thriller night. And no one’s gonna save you from the beast about to strike….” Now it’s going to be in my head all freaking dayyyyyyyy! Happy Halloween to me…not!

As much as I have heard and seen “Thriller” way toooooooooooo much, I dearly love an old horror movie. Specifically old movies where most of the horror takes place off camera and the special effects are created in your own head. Not the newer, more blood and swimming pools full of gore movies.

Bela Lugosi nibbling at necks, Colin Clive hovering over Boris Karloff manically yelling “It’s Alive,” or Vincent Price grabbing you by the throat from the “Oblong Box.” I even loved the humor of Marty Feldman as Igor extorting Gene Wilder to “Walk This Way!” or Count von Krolock licking his lips as he watched a bathing Sharon Tate in “The Fearless Vampire Hunters”…a few less bubbles please.

I loved them even though they really didn’t scare me. There WAS that disturbing scene with The Monster and the little girl. My fear was reserved for another generation of films that probably began with Michael terrorizing Jamie Lee in “Halloween” and “Carrie” burning down the town. Yes, I did scream during the final scene.

The one movie that absolutely terrified me beyond any reason was a 1972 low budget film called “Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things.” Snappy title. I found out later that it had been filmed in fourteen days and believe me it looked like it. A theater group of young people find themselves on an island filming a horror film.

Using Satan’s own “book of the dead” they accidentally raise an island full of dead and the theater group ends up dead, torn apart by zombies who end the movie by getting on a boat headed toward a nearby city to continue eating. “More Brains Please!”

It shouldn’t have been that scary and probably wasn’t, but I haven’t had guts enough to rent it. During my coaching days, after Friday night football games, I always found it hard to sleep and usually tried to put myself to sleep by watching TBS on cable and sipping Jack Daniels.

This TBS was the old version that was still owned by Ted Turner, featuring Saturday afternoon wrestling after an all-night horror fest of reasonably new films, sandwiched around cartoons and such.

Being in the early Eighties, “Children Shouldn’t Play…” was reasonably new, only a decade old or so. I was alone, my roommate brother out for the night participating in an evening of “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll” I am sure. My significant other…there was no significant other at the time as I was still waiting around for the love of my life to ask me out. You really should not watch a horror film at two in the morning without someone to snuggle with or at least call-in case you need to be talked down from your fear.

It wasn’t the movie…the plot was too easy to follow. You just knew that as soon as they finished their “raise the dead chant” terrible things were going to happen and that the black guy would be the first victim. He was and was soon followed by the two amorous youngsters who had snuck off for a little quality time alone.

I laughed…until that damn music started. It really wasn’t music; it was more like a million fingernails being drug over a chalk board or a million out-of-tune violins being played with a crosscut saw. With the hair standing up on the back of my neck, the bodies started popping out of their graves like daisies in the spring sun. That should have been laughable…except for that damn music!

“Who you gonna call?” Not “Ghostbusters” because it had not been released yet. Well at least another theme is running through my head now instead of “Thriller.” “Who you gonna call, GHOSTBUSTERS!”

Happy Halloween! May your treats be more numerous than your tricks and the bite on your neck be from your love and not Bella Lugosi.

Don Miller’s authors page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

The Haunting of Hemlock Hills

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“It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years.”  -Nora Roberts, “Key of Knowledge”

Haunted houses have always been a mainstay of the horror genre. From “The Haunting of Hill House”, or the Bates Motel in “Psyco”, to the Marsten House in “’Salem’s Lot” there is something malevolent about the old, worn down and crumbling homes…including my own. Sometimes first impressions are not the best impressions.

We don’t have the Spanish moss or swamps that go hand in hand with Southern Gothic. Just an old farmhouse sitting on top of a hill surrounded by hemlocks and memories. The numerous hemlocks made it easy to name our homeplace “Hemlock Hills.”

The original front porch shone with a silvery gray color in the moonlight…from the silver paint applied by a wandering group of shysters who convinced the previous owners to let them paint the roof.  The silver paint had been washed off by the first winter rain, staining the original lapboard cladding the old farmhouse.  The shysters are long gone but the house still stands. Moss covered chimneys in disrepair rose above the rust-stained, metal shingles.  If you need a site for a horror film, I have one for you.

This was the house we purchased thirty-five years ago…a house we fell in love with as soon as we saw it.  A house we renovated and brought into the twenty-first century.  I wish we had left it the way it was when we first saw it but sometimes my memories are softer than the here and now.

Spirits reside here.  Renovations have not chased them away. They aren’t the haints from Gullah legend or Bell Witches or Wampus Cats from Appalachia and the Cherokee that haunt according to South Carolina lore. They are softer and welcoming. They are ghosts of the past that live in our memories.

Mike Franks, a character from the television program NCIS made the following observation, “With the memories we make. We fill the spaces we live in with them. That’s why I’ve always tried to make sure that wherever I live, the longer I live there, the spaces become filled with memories of naked women.”

I always laugh when I hear him say that.  I think too, our spaces become haunted not only with the memories of naked people but any person who has been lost…people we don’t even know…people who lived their lives and died within these walls.

At least three different families contributed to the memories I believe haunt this old farmhouse.  Except for a period in the Fifties, it has been occupied continuously since the 1890s… a lot of spirits I would guess.

Despite our renovations, this old farmhouse still creaks and moans.  If the wind is exactly right and the TV is low, late at night you can hear the spirits…whispers in the dark, a light footfall, a woman’s giggle…or is it just a scurrying mouse or a puppy moving in her sleep at the foot of the bed or a flying squirrel landing in the cubby in the bedroom?

Sometimes when I’m reading or writing, as the witching hour approaches, I catch movement just outside the periphery of my vision…beyond the light cast by my reading lamp.  A shadow that doesn’t quite belong, a flash of light despite the darkness that surrounds me.  I don’t fear them, I welcome them. I don’t understand why they don’t come closer.

In the moonlight outside as I stand at the kitchen window, dapples of silver and gray make me wonder what I might be seeing. The spirits of long-dead animals that once played in the backyard still come out to frolic in the moonlight.

We’ve spent thirty-six Halloweens inside of these walls…we’ve never had a trick or treater.  No little ghouls or goblins, real or imagined.  The house looks haunted in the darkness of night with moonlight filtering through the hemlocks.  It is their loss.  A not so wicked witch lives here.

I’m comfortable with my spirits.  The spirits residing here…and the ones I brought with me from a time gone by, from places that no longer exist anywhere other than my mind.  No vampires or werewolves, just spirits that lovingly caress a cheek or place a steadying hand lightly upon my shoulder.  Comfortable and loving spirits from a long past who visit me every day, not just Halloween.

For more of Don Miller’s ramblings https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Cornbread as Dry as the Sahara

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“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” ― James Beard

I doubt James Beard grew up with bad cornbread, with or without butter. I did. Come to think of it, rarely have I had good cornbread. Mostly it is too dry. Dry like the Sahara Desert. Did you know the word Sahara means “desert” in Arabic? We’ve been saying the “Desert Desert” in all our geography courses.

Photo of the “Desert Desert” by Greg Gulik on Pexels.com

The Sahara gets between zero to three inches of rain per year with some areas not receiving any moisture for years and years. The Sahara isn’t even the driest desert. That goes to the Atacama in Chile and Argentina. How dry is it? As dry as Nannie’s cornbread.

I have made it a lifelong quest to find good cornbread. I have been thwarted…mostly. Most people would have quit but being a Southern gentleman, I feel compelled to continue eating cornbread or give up my Southern gentleman’s card.

My grandmother, Nannie, made bread for every meal. Biscuits or cornbread. On those nights she made cornbread I cringed. Dry, dry, dry. How dry was her cornbread? If it had been a cow, it would have given evaporated milk. “Ba-dum…BUM” rimshot.

I can remember my grandparents crumbling up their cornbread into Their Looney Tunes jelly glasses filled with buttermilk. Sylvester the Cat did not look impressed. Any liquid, even buttermilk, adds moisture to the driest cornbread. Adding Nannie’s cornbread to buttermilk seemed to be combining two evils to make a greater evil. I like buttermilk in dishes like biscuits but have never developed a taste for it as a libation with or without crumbled cornbread in it. Okay, I’ll be sending my Southern gentleman’s card back ASAP.

With Linda’s malady many friends and family have contributed meals for which we are thankful. Many have featured cornbread to be crumbled into soup. Good thing. Good cornbread by taste but…dry. Dry cornbread goes good in soup…if the soup is good and it has been. Thankfully, no cornbread has included sugar in its recipe.

My wife, by chance, tumbled onto an alternative recipe. She made ‘close’ to good cornbread before the alternative recipe. She will tell you it is because I like my cornbread just underdone and she would take the pone out early and cut a few wedges out just to suit me before returning the cornbread to the oven to finish.

I agree with her. Truth be told, I like my biscuits slightly underdone, too.

I have memories of being allowed to eat raw biscuit dough made with lard and how many times did I lick the spoon from cake batter made with raw eggs, and unpasteurized milk? The horror! Raw lard and yet, I survived. Same with cookie dough.

So, what was the alternative recipe? The same as a regular recipe except for one ingredient…squash.

One summer we had an overabundance of squash. I gave it away to friends, family, and unsuspecting souls who drove by my garden with their car windows down. Still, I ate it every day for a month.

One of those days we had leftovers of boiled squash and onions and had earlier run out of different ways to use squash. With a mess of green beans cooking away on the stove, cornbread was an option. We pondered what we might do with the leftover squash. One of us suggested she use it in her cornbread and my quest for moist cornbread came to an end.

The cornbread was wonderful and so moist I had to eat it with a fork. With cornbread containing squash, and a mess of green beans, we had the “Three Sisters” covered and I was happy to ask for a second helping of cornbread. Summer squash is so mild it really didn’t change the taste of the cornbread.

After doing some research I feel a little akin to that lost explorer, Christopher Colombus. I discovered something that wasn’t lost. Seems like I’m not the only one looking for moist cornbread and recipes abound on various internet sites incorporating squash.

Ok, I’ll be takin’ my Southern gentleman’s card back! Truth be told, I loved Linda’s cornbread before we added squash.

Linda’s Cornbread

Ingredients

Two cups of Aunt Jemima’s self-rising cornmeal

One cup of White Lily self-rising flour (Used Red Band until it was discontinued)

Two Cups of buttermilk…maybe. Add buttermilk until you get the consistency you want along with a squirt of water.

One egg

One large tablespoon of Duke’s Mayonnaise

A dash of salt and pepper

A pinch of sugar (Optional)

Butter, Bacon grease – enough to cover the bottom of a cast iron frying pan

If using Squash, a cup of pre-cooked, drained, and chopped

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Coat the bottom of frying pan with butter or bacon grease, or both. Yes, you can use vegetable oil if you must.

Place frying pan in the oven but don’t let butter burn.

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix well.

Turn down oven to 350 degrees.

Remove frying pan from oven and carefully pour the mix into the pan. There should be a satisfying sizzle.

Cook for twenty to twenty-five minutes and see if it has browned enough. If not, turn it back up to 425 until it is. A toothpick inserted in the middle should come back clean.

Please give Don’s author’s page a look-see at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Vampires Tapping on Your Window-It’s Halloween Season Again

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“At three in the morning the blood runs slow and thick, and slumber is heavy. The soul either sleeps in blessed ignorance of such an hour or gazes about itself in utter despair. There is no middle ground.”
― Stephen King, ‘Salem’s Lot

It was three in the morning, the real witching hour according to many theologians and historians. It is “inverse” time to when Christ was crucified. Therefore, it is the time when evil loves to play. Witches, ghouls, demons, and the like having a chilling fun time. What about vampires? What is that tapping?

I awoke to a tapping on my bedroom window. It was spring, a late Saturday night or an early Sunday morning in the mid to late Seventies…the year, not the temperature. I awoke with goosebumps chasing themselves up and down my spine. It was the witching hour.

I don’t know why I remember certain things like it was “a Saturday night in the mid to late Seventies.”  Dateless and alone on a Saturday night? Sam Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night” plays in the background of my memory.

I had discovered Stephen King and was reading ’Salem’s Lot” to while away the alone time. One should never read Stephen King while alone and in the middle of the night. For those of you who are unfamiliar with ‘Salem’s Lot, it is a vampire yarn featuring bloodsuckers taking over an entire town. I assume everyone is familiar with Stephen King.

I love good scary yarns. Vampires and any book by King seem to be my favorites although I won’t turn down a good Zombie apocalypse or end of world scenario. The Walking Dead? Sure, and it isn’t even King. I also love Halloween season because it takes advantage of the horror genre, and I can usually find an old horror film to get a good dose of fear…unless I’ve seen it a dozen times or so.

‘Salem’s Lot besides being scary as hell, has an instructional section devoted to…vampire protocols. The section went farther than I must sleep in a casket on a bed of home soil, I risk a bad sunburn if I appear before dark and to maintain my immortality I must feed on virginal blood and stay away from sharp, pointed stakes.

Just before I had decided to call it a night, I read that a vampire couldn’t come into your home unless you invited them in. That was why I was awake. I had heard, TAP, TAP, TAP on the window next to my bed.

Alone, with no one to run to or call, I’m hearing a TAP, TAP, TAP on the window of my apartment bedroom. My second-floor apartment bedroom…just hours after reading how “little vampire Johnny” had hypnotized his little brother to open a second story window and invite him in. You just can’t trust a vampire or a little brother.

“Whatever you do… DON’T LOOK THEM IN THEIR LITTLE VAMPIRE EYES!” That’s how they hypnotize you…and I heard it again…TAP, TAP, TAP. I could imagine his little vampire fingers…those tiny, gray, blood drained fingers. I imagined his big vampire smile, lips stained with blood surrounding sharp little fangs…mouthing…” Come on man! Just invite me in, it won’t sting…much.”  TAP, TAP, TAP. Sorry little vampire guy, this ain’t a McMiller’s drive-thru window.

There was a breeze churned up by a distant thunderstorm…, “it was a dark and stormy night” …and the window was cracked enough to take advantage of the spring coolness…the breeze was moving the curtains…” DON’T LOOK! DON’T LOOK!”

Thunder rumbled in the distance…” DON’T LOOK! DON’T LOOK!” A gust of wind moved the curtains. I didn’t look…I slept with the lights on and the covers over my head. A grown man sleeping with the lights on with covers over his head…it was a grown man NOT sleeping but with the lights on and the covers over his head.

The next morning, as soon as the sun was FULLY above the horizon, I went out, all bleary-eyed, hoping to see that what had caused the TAP, TAP, TAP was not a vampire. I was met by the Doberman Pincher from the apartment below. Placing her paws on my shoulders while looking me in the eyes, she pinned me to the wall assuring me it wasn’t her. Her master explained, “She’s in heat and a bit jumpy.” I would agree. I’m jumpy but not in heat.

It was the tree…a water oak. A little branch just close enough to tap, tap, tap in the wind…or was it? No, I ain’t fallin’ for it. Why take the chance?  Where is my crucifix?  Do I have a clove of garlic?

For more of Don Miller’s whacky rantings, please go to his author’s page at http://amazon.com/author/cigarman501.

Note: From the https://paranormalauthority.com

“Many theologians suggest the true witching hour takes place between 3 and 4 AM. In traditional Christianity, canonical hours, or regularly intervaled prayers, were held in strict observance, save for that one, now infamous, hour. Over time, this period of the night became associated with unsavory activities and supernatural beings. Anyone caught lurking out of doors around 3 AM was often accused of witchcraft, and devil worship.

Most historians also agree that the witching hour was most likely linked to 3 AM, due to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It is believed that Jesus perished around three in the afternoon, rendering 3 AM an inversion of that time. In short, any demonic or supernatural activity that occurs at that time is a mockery of the Christian faith.”

Of Dung Beetles and Other Seriousness

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“Quit complaining about life’s burdens, a dung beetle carries up 1000 times its own body weight.”
― Anoir Ou-Chad

The things you think about while embraced by the silence….

She has finally gone to sleep…sitting in her infusion chair. Neither of us sleep well the night before her infusions. Her infusion chair looks comfortable, my chair is anything but. No nap for me. There are many of us sitting in uncomfortable chairs supporting friends and family, all hooked up to infusions of “hope.” All of us are uncomfortable in our chairs and our thoughts.

This is Linda’s chemo treatment number three of six. I understand why she has a difficult night but wonder why I’m having a sympathetic reaction. I will usually sleep through almost anything. All night I dealt with intrusive dreams. Minor dealings compared to hers but major to me.

I sit with her as she gets her five hours of liquid “hope”. She picks a room with a view instead of a room with a TV. I sit with my back to the wide windows watching her watch the wind move tree limbs until she falls asleep. Linda can’t tolerate the chatter of TV or radio for some reason, and I am having a problem dealing with the silence.

I do have a computer to provide a bit of noise over my pods and just watched a YouTube video of a dung beetle hard at work. It was an accident. I didn’t just Google or YouTube “Dung Beetle” but once I saw the preview I was hooked and watched several videos. They are hypnotic.

The video was of a dung beetle hard at work. What kind of work does a dung beetle do? They roll small balls of poop into large balls of poop and then feed off them or use them as a breeding chamber. Breeding chamber? Barry White croons in a deep baritone, “I can’t get enough of your love baby.” I think in a high screech, “Hey baby, want to come check out my big ole ball of poop?”

There must be some kind of lesson here, I’m just too groggy to figure out what it might be. “A water buffalo’s poop is a dung beetles cabana?” That wasn’t even funny in my head, I don’t know why I decided to go ahead and add it.

Amazing fact. There are three types of dung beetles, mine is called a “roller” for obvious reasons. “Rollers” can roll up over 250 times their mass in one night and bury it to be feasted upon later. Amazingly, all this demanding work is done with their rear legs while standing on their head. I wonder if female dung beetles are impressed by the size of their paramour’s balls? Of poop. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Obviously, watching videos about dung beetles is not about dung beetles. It’s about not thinking about my sleeping bride who is battling cancer. I clutch every time I think or say the word. It is as if I don’t say it, it might not be true. But then, I see her softened face as she sleeps through her infusion, liquid hope running into her veins.

I wonder what kind of devils run through her mind. I’m sure she has her intrusive thoughts. When we talk, our focus tends to be more about the “hope.” The blood panels have come back good. Cancer antigens have gone down after every infusion but in the back of my mind I worry that the cosmic Big Guy is going to snatch the rug out from under us.

Dung beetles don’t seem to worry. They are perfectly happy to roll up poop balls all day long. I don’t want to trade my life for that of a dung beetle but there is something to be said about a lack of worry.

Historical

Ancient Egyptians held dung beetles in high regard. The “sacred scarab” was in fact a dung beetle.

Update

As I said before, we are halfway, completing chemo treatment number three. She is wired on the steroids that are included in chemo and I can’t help but wonder when the energizer bunny will wind down. She slept not a wink last night and I feel guilty that I did.

Her cancer antigens have continued to drop but her side effects have continued to escalate. There is a tradeoff there, I’m sure. Despite the pain she is optimistic.

Again, thanks for your prayers and comments of encouragement.

Don Miller doesn’t just write about dung beetles. He has published several books, fiction, and nonfiction. They can be purchased or downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true