Oh, the Horror…Happy Halloween

October 31, 2025 / cigarman501 / 4 Comments

“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 is the morning of Halloween, and I am awake. For some reason, threeish seems to be the hour that I awake. Sometimes I fall back to sleep but often I do not. This is an often I do not morning. Known as “the Witching Hour,” I certainly seem to be under a spell.

Three AM is referred to as the witching hour due to the belief that it is a time when supernatural forces, such as witches, demons, and ghosts, are at their most powerful. This association stems from the idea that witches cast their spells in the darkness of night when they can go undetected, and it is thought to be when the veil between life and death is at its weakest.

The phrase “witching hour” use began at least as early as 1762, when it appeared in Elizabeth Carolina Keene’s Miscellaneous Poems. It alludes to Hamlet’s line “Tis now the very witching time of night, When Churchyards yawne, and hell it selfe breakes out Contagion to this world.” Thank you, Wikipedia.

Further thanks to Swedish director, Ingamar Bergman. He coined the phrase “The Hour of the Wolf” due to his 1968 thriller with the same name. In his own words, the hour of the wolf is

“The hour between night and dawn … when most people die, sleep is deepest, nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their worst anguish, when ghosts and demons are most powerful. The hour of the wolf is also the hour when most babies are born.”

I don’t know why he included babies, I hope it is simply a fact, although Rosemary’s Baby came out in the same year. A movie based on the spawn of a human woman and the devil himself, I know some babies that cry like their father might have been Satan.

In the dim light of my computer screen, I wonder if I am haunted. There are certainly memories that haunt me. My old farmhouse creaks and moans when the wind is just right, sometime there is the patter of little mice feet or a shadow that I had not noticed before. All seem to make me feel haunted. I can see my puppies, asleep on the couch, twitching in their sleep as if they are chasing a dream involving rabbits or squirrels. Haunted? Probably.

I am unsure when I first became interested in horror. I remember reading Mary Shelly, Bram Stoker, and Edgar Allen Poe when I was in high school. Horror greats from another age along with black and white, midnight horror fests that included reruns of Boris Karloff as “the monster” and Bela Lugosi, not the first vampire character but certainly the coolest Count Dracula.

On the small screen there was Thriller’s “Pigeons from Hell”hosted by Karloff, The Twilight Zone with Rod Serling hosting Captain Kirk’s “Terror at 20000 Feet” and Alfred Hitchcock Present’s “Lamb to the Slaughter.” I wonder if we taste like chicken.

In college I remember going to the old Ritz Theater in Newberry with a group of fraternity bros. The Oblong Box starring Vincent Price was playing. A movie about premature burial and Voodoo, a scene of a hand reaching out of a casket is all I can remember. It may be blasphemy, but I was never a Vincent Price fan and had to research what the movie was about.

I may not know when I became a horror enthusiast, but I know when it became solidified, along with science fiction, as my go to genres. Whether on a printed page or on a screen, it is Stephen King.

I have told this story before and will probably tell it again. My first King book was “’Salem’s Lot.” A story about the infestation of small-town Maine by vampires. According to King’s own words, “it is Peyton Place meets Dracula.” Whatever it was, it scared me to death, scared to death in a good way.

I remember reading it late on an early spring Saturday night. I was alone, propped up on my bed, which itself is horror for an unattached young adult male. My windows were open to a welcoming breeze, the drapes fluttering occasionally. A thunderstorm was rumbling in the distance.

As I read a passage that explained that vampires had to be invited into your home and were sneaky enough to hypnotize you into doing so, I heard a faint tapping on my second-floor apartment window.

“Tap, tap, tap!” I pause and listen. I heard it again. The same tap, tap, tap. There was no way I was going to walk over to that window. Instead, I did what any sane person would do. I left the light on and pulled the bed cover over my head.

The next morning, in the light of day, I found the tapping was caused by a tree limb that had grown too close to my window. Sure, that was it.

I have the newest remake of ‘Salem’s Lot ready to be watched. I have been saving it for this Halloween night. I hope it is at least as good as the late Seventies miniseries although it may be impossible for anyone to replace James Mason as the vampire’s main minion, Richard Straker. If it isn’t, I can reread the book. I still have my original copy.

However you celebrate Halloween, I hope you have a ghoulishly, good night. Here are happy “boos” to you.

If you like fiction, try Thunder Along the Copperhead. Not Gothic horror, it is a historical romance with plenty of history of the depression year of 1933. An almost destitute farm woman, a damaged World War One veteran who moonshines on the side are the primary characters. Please help a struggling author by downloading or purchasing it in paperback. Thanks, I know you will.

The Witching Hour

November 8, 2024November 14, 2024 / cigarman501 / 6 Comments

The Witching Hour

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” ― Stephen King

As a child I believed the witching hour was the hour after midnight. As an adult I have found it to be the 3 am hour, an hour that can often encompass the rest of the night. As much as I might wish to be haunted by certain ghostly specters, most of the spells cast upon me emanate from my own mind and create monsters that wish to consume my soul.

I once dwelled on issues that amount to little…the molehills of life. Questions such as “Should I have bought toilet paper” when I last went to the grocery store or is there some hidden malady hiding in my water heater causing it to breakdown when I next need hot water. These issues are random and silly but rob me of my needed sleep.

I live in an old farmhouse, over one hundred and twenty years old. During the quiet of the witching hour, the house creaks and pops in the same way I creak and pop when I first arise in the morning.

The puppies squirm and whimper as they dream whatever puppy dogs dream about. Mice play in the attic…I really need to go up and check on what damage is being done. Something else for me to dwell upon while I wait for the sun to appear.

Lately my witching hour doesn’t dwell on the silly or random. Lately, my reflections focus on my bride. It has been seven months, but her death is still fresh and cutting. Many days I walk into the house expecting to find her puttering about, her dark mane of hair framing her smiling face and twinkling brown eyes. I am heart wrenchingly disappointed.

The witching hour was the time Linda would attempt to get up, on her own, and go to the bathroom. After several falls my puppies and I learned to wake up with her. It is a habit I can’t seem to rid myself of.

In the dark of the witching hour, I struggle to see the youthful and energetic Linda Gail. I must force myself to purge the memories from the final year of her life, struggling to replace visions of sickness and pain with memories of the special times in our life.

My recent dreams seem to trigger the witching hour. My dreams have a common subject, being lost. Common locations can be seen but I can’t find my way to them. With every twist and turn they seem farther away, or sometimes, disappear totally.

I am lost on streets or bizarre corridors that shouldn’t exist. I encounter old friends along the way, folks I haven’t seen in years…many now dead. They are no help, their directions causing me to become more lost. In the dream I grow fearful and anxious.

I awaken and find that fear and anxiety are real. I lay quietly attempting to regulate my respiration before getting up and staggering outside to attempt to calm my panic with a cigar. My faithful companions come with me, guarding me until I rise to return to bed. A return to sleep rarely occurs.

I don’t need someone with a medical degree in psychology to explain the origins of my dreams. I am lost… in the dark or in the light of day, I am lost without my rudder. The seas are stormy, and I have no way to steer. “The monsters are real, and the ghosts are real too.”

***

On a brighter note, before Linda’s transition I released the book, “Food for Thought.” It can be purchased in paperback or downloaded at http://tinyurl.com/yrt7bee2

Oh, the Horror….

October 29, 2023October 28, 2023 / 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

October 22, 2023October 21, 2023 / cigarman501 / 6 Comments

“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

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

October 8, 2023October 7, 2023 / cigarman501 / 6 Comments

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.”

Southern Horror

October 18, 2020October 18, 2020 / cigarman501 / 6 Comments

I guess I should add a disclaimer from the get-go. My post is not about the horror of an unexpected swallow of unsweetened tea or being served grits without salt, butter, or cheese. No, that goes well beyond horror. This is about the horror genre and its effects on the unexpecting. The effects of being so scared your feet refuse to move.

A pair of New Englanders find themselves lost, stuck up to the axles of their ’56 Ford in the middle of a Southern piney woods. The light is quickly failing over a dilapidated Southern mansion sitting at the end of an overgrown drive. Brothers, they discuss what to do and decide to spend the night in the abandoned mansion. Never a smart move if you are familiar with Southern Gothic.

The Pendleton-Graves Home in Sparta, Georgia.
Photo by David Bulit

As they walk to the mansion a flock of pigeons are spooked…the makings of a Southern Gothic horror story for sure. I can think of dozens of reasons it is a bad idea to spend the night in an abandoned mansion but then I have seen too many movie and TV episodes and have read too many horror stories.

I can tell you exactly when I fell in love with Gothic Horror, specifically Southern Gothic Horror. That would be June 6, 1961. It was a Monday night in front of a black and white TV. I watched and listened to a lisping Boris Karloff introduce this week’s Thriller episode, “Pigeon’s From Hell.” Murder by ax, Voodoo, Zombies, the Blassenville family with a history of abuse, all with bad Southern accents dripping from the screen like Spanish moss hanging from cypress trees.

I jumped when character Johnny Banner is caught in the afore mentioned flock of pigeons, pigeons that represented the lost souls murdered. Later, I hid my eyes when the same character attempts to split his brother Timothy’s skull with a hatchet. He does this after having had his own skull split by persons or “things” unknown.

Love me some murdering Zombies with split skulls although my former Haitian baseball player says Zombies are a movie creation…wait was he Haitian or Jamaican? Does it make a difference to Zombies?

A Thriller a Day...: Pigeons From Hell: Season 1 Episode 36 — Johnny ready to give forty whacks…wait, wrong movie.

Many years later I would read the short story with the same title the TV episode drew from. It was written by pulp fiction icon and the creator of Conan the Barbarian, Robert E. Howard. The story was published posthumously in Weird Tales, a fantasy and horror magazine in 1938. Despite “Thirties noir speak”, it is a good short story and a better story line than the TV version.

There is something baleful about abandoned Southern mansions, with or without pigeons or Zombies. Doors and shutters hanging askew, broken windowpanes, paint peeling to expose the silver of many layers of whitewash underneath, old chimneys collapsing under their own weight. Columns…one can almost hear the voices of the dead and abused in the breeze especially if you have an active eleven-year-old imagination…even an active seventy-year-old imagination.

In the late Sixties, our group of high school friends decided to explore the Brattonsville Plantation house near Rock Hill, SC…in the dead of night, near what is universally known as the witching hour. Alcohol might have been a contributing factor; I don’t rightly remember. I do remember there was a Mars/Venus component as we males wanted to impress the young women among our group. Young women make young men stupid…stupider.

I won’t deny feeling a bit of trepidation as I thought about how close the name Blassenville was to Brattonsville and wondered if anyone had been practicing Voodoo within its less than comfy confines. Pigeons? Are there pigeons?

During those days Brattonsville was the perfect example of a “rundown” and abandoned Southern plantation. The homeplace has since been renovated to its Antebellum glory as have the other buildings but I do not remember them that way. The mental vision I have is of a place perfect for Southern Gothic Horror.

I remember there was a full or near full moon and the unkept grounds seemed to glow with a light of their own as we made our way to the huge mansion house. In my mind I see the first story entryway door standing open, under the twin galleries’ roofs. The darkness beyond is inviting the lambs to a possible slaughter.

Homestead House, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Restoration of the Homestead began in 1975 and it was opened to the public a year later. http://chmuseums.org/history-hb/

One of the members of our group was well versed in Brattonville’s “supposed” history and regaled us with stories of a less than sane family, abused slaves, the Klu Klux Klan, cruel medical experiments and a Yankee spy hung from a pulley above an attic window. Owned since before the Revolutionary War by a series of doctors, our historian told tales that made the Bratton doctors seem to be the combinations of Doctors Jekyll, Frankenstein, and Phibes.

We explored all the rooms and made our way to the third-floor attic, site of the medical laboratory and the hanging according to my date’s history lesson. I had overcome my initial fear and found myself leading the group, not because of my bravery I assure you, but because I had the only flashlight.

Built for John Simpson Bratton Jr. and his wife Harriet Rainey Bratton in 1856. Then called “Forrest Hall,” it is now known as “Hightower Hall”. It could have been its own haunted mansion. https://chmuseums.org/hightower-hall-hb/

As my cute historian told her story of hangings and medical experiments, I found myself in the narrow and empty attic lab…not exactly empty. There appeared to be examination tables and I fully expected to see a medical skeleton. Instead, a breeze drew my attention to an open window and the figure hung with a perfect hangman’s noose suspended there.

I froze in place while my five friends took off like scalded haints. My brain said run, my feet refused. I might as well have been a tree rooted in place. I froze long enough to realize what I was seeing was a department store mannequin. The plastic kind…in fact one of its legs had fallen off.

As my fright dissipated, I found my feet and walked closer. As the mannequin slowly turned in the breeze, I noticed a note held around its neck by a cord. My flash revealed a single sentence written in red lipstick…”Mickey Mouse is a Jew.” Yeah, kind of anti-climactic but a sentence that has kept me wondering for over fifty years.

My friends? They didn’t leave me…I had the car keys. It did take a while to gather them up.

***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu9OaliJ424

***

The history of Brattonsville (documented history) includes

The original home was built in 1776 by Colonel William Bratton who participated in the nearby Revolutionary War Battle between Patriots and Loyalist, The Battle of Huck’s Defeat. Brattonsville was used in the filming of the movie, The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson.

There was a one night stay by Jefferson Davis as he fled the surrender of Richmond in hopes of reaching Confederate troops in the South or West. (Supposedly this is when the spy was hung but I can find no documentation.)

Dr. J. Rufus Bratton, a York County Klan leader, was the inspiration for the book The Clansman and the 1918 movie it spawned, Birth of a Nation. I am not telling this with any sort of pride but history is history. My guess is Dr. Rufus Bratton was not a nice person when it came to race relations.

***

Don Miller’s authors page may be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0pjOyQmBib8Mbptaegd7cbdhBk1Dqd3AwEssRjtjCtVGq4zxV2P_c9zKk

***

The featured image is from another Southern Gothic film, Swamp Water, starring Walter Brennan, Dana Andrews, and Walter Huston.

Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies…and a Cold War Submarine, Oh My!

October 31, 2019October 24, 2022 / cigarman501 / 3 Comments

Horror movies? It’s about sex…I knew sex would raise its ugly head…a pun maybe? Not really. It is about sex and other stuff too.

“A common piece of dating advice for young men years ago was to take their date to a scary movie. The tip was based on the idea that when their date got frightened, they would curl in for “protection”; thus, reinforcing a bond between the two (this is the G-Rated version of the rationale).” ¹

Dateline early 1970. We snuggled in the old Galaxie 500, popcorn, Pepsis, and Milk Duds at the ready. Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers had made the rounds at walk-in movie theaters and several years later had been relegated to drive-ins. It didn’t matter, the movie was cheap entertainment and presented an opportunity to spend some quality time with my date on the back row of the Newberry Drive-In. Date? We were destined to be married in the Summer of 1971 but were still tiptoeing around with each other in early 1970. It might have been better if we had stubbed our toes. Our breakup was much more painful than a broken little toe.

The date was red-headed…as was Sharon Tate, the now-dead heroine of the movie. She had a nice form as well put together…so had Sharon Tate. As you can tell, at the time I was quite infatuated with both my date and Sharon Tate. It was a shame Sharon had died in a horror much worse than any movie. Shame the infatuation with my date died after the marriage.

The movie we watched was a horror-comedy…plenty of laughs from two inept vampire slayers, plenty of scares and blood-sucking from Count von Krolock and his vampire minions populating the snow and ice-covered Transylvanian castle.

The movie was mostly comedy and Sharon Tate’s cleavage, but for some reason, the opening credits grabbed our attention, a blood drop that trickled down and across, dropped, and bounced along as the title rolled. The gothic music made our skin crawl. We were hooked on something other than our libidos…the laughter was good…and the chills as we “curled in for protection.”

Much of my reading and viewing habits have revolved around horror, sci-fi along with murder and mayhem. A perfect world is combining them all. I like a good comedy but given a choice I’ll go with a murder mystery that twists and turns like switchbacks on a mountain road or horror that leaves one on the edge of your seats awaiting an electrical shock from fear…and I like the sexual innuendo thrown in for good measure. Fade to black.

I’ve found vampires to be much more entertaining than werewolves or zombies…except for the werewolf transformation in some forgotten movie. As I remember, there was an extremely attractive female who suffered from lycanthropy and an aversion to clothes it would seem. The movie was The Howling but I’m not sure. She was quite fetching despite the body fur, but vampires are sexy.

The vampires of my younger day were well dressed in black tuxedoes with blood-red accouterments, were suave, had a foreign lisp and for some reason, women found them irresistible. “Look into my eyes….” Young females seemed to enjoy having fangs sucking on their necks.

When the heroine was penetrated, by the vampire’s fangs you guttersnipe, a look of sheer ecstasy came over her face and it was up to the boring but stalwart hero to save her and break the spell. Save her by driving a stake through the heart of his rival before the count could exit his musty old coffin at sundown and plunge his glistening, long fangs into the soft neck of his victim.

A soft neck surrounded by expansive décolletage in Sharon Tate’s case. Slowly feeding, rhythmically licking away her very lifeblood as the helpless young lady pants, “Oh, oh, oh!” Yep, it was about sex, but we faded to black during those days and let our minds and libidos create their own scenes.

I haven’t been a fan of the horror genre in film since the Eighties. The violence became too graphic and the sexual innuendo and double entendres quite transparent…if there was any sexual insinuation at all. It seems graphic violence and gore became the point.

Still, I loved John Carpenter even though just a few of his movies dealt with vampires or sexual overtones…well, there were plenty of scenes with young people trying to get busy only to be interrupted by a knife-wielding maniac.

The first two Halloween movies, The Thing and The Fog were my favorites… okay, I admit I liked the way Adrienne Barbeau filled out her flannel shirt and her voice as DJ Stevie Wayne reminded me of smooth bourbon, quite warming on a cool night…unless you lived in Antonio Bay and were attacked by whatever was inside of The Fog.

Said in a smooth and sultry voice, “But if this has been anything but a nightmare, and if we don’t wake up to find ourselves safe in our beds, it could come again. To the ships at sea who can hear my voice, look across the water, into the darkness. Look for the fog,”

With the graphic violence of modern horror, I’ve turned more to the pages of books than the silver screen, now in bloody color. I just don’t need to see heads exploding or bodies eviscerated, instead, I enjoy the special effects my mind creates along with the double entendres.

I’m not going to reread Frankenstein or Dracula; they have been read too many times. Same with Poe’s horror stories. I am not sure Bram Stroker even knew about the sexual innuendo he had created within his horror…whether he did or not, the sex was there…along with the horror. Still, they got me started and sent me on to King, Koontz, Rice, and Straub.

As I think back to the scariest movie or book, I ever read or saw, it was not horror per se and involved no vampires, werewolves, or zombies…there was sexual innuendo in the movie, even some fade to black. On the Beach by Neville Shute and the movie by the same title starring Gregory Peak as American submarine commander Dwight Towers and Ava Gardner as his Australian lover, Miora Davidson, scared me to death.

The plot is a simple one, nuclear war breaks out and we annihilate ourselves. No one knows who started the war, only that it, and the world is finished. Radiation covers most of the earth except for Australia, New Zealand, and parts of South America and Africa. Unfortunately, the last remaining pockets of humanity will slowly die of radiation poisoning as a death cloud creeps southward. The United States is gone except for one lone submarine and her crew, now docked in Melbourne.

The end is near. The book and movie cover the last few months left for humanity, only the cockroaches will remain.

The closing line from the book states, “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” In the movie’s closing, Waltzing Matilda plays against the backdrop of a submarine going home for the last time, deserted streets, homes, and arenas as a wind-blown banner is seen, its words hoping against reality, “There is still time, Brother.”

For someone growing up during the Cold War, it was scary. For someone who, today, believes in Global Climate Change, the plea, “There is still time, Brother,” seems quite timely. I doubt we will go whimpering, instead, we will continue to point our fingers blaming everyone else or our own demise.

The final scene begins at the 2:57 mark.

¹Christopher Dwyer, Ph.D., “5 Reasons We Enjoy Being Scared”, Psychology Today, October 19,2018, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thoughts-thinking/201810/5-reasons-we-enjoy-being-scared

All movie trailers were pilfered from YouTube.

The featured image is from https://www.surveycrest.com/blog/10-scariest-halloween-monsters/

Don Miller’s author page may be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Thanks!

Haunted Houses

October 31, 2018October 17, 2023 / cigarman501 / 4 Comments

An old farmhouse sitting on top of a hill. Tall hemlock and walnut trees surround it. 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 that clad the old farmhouse. The shysters were long gone. 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.

Spirits reside here. Renovations have not chased them away.

Four families have contributed memories I believe haunt this old farmhouse. Except for a period in the Fifties, it has been occupied continuously since 1892…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 just a scurrying mouse or a puppy moving in her sleep at the foot of the bed. I choose the former.

Sometimes when I’m reading, 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.

We’ve spent thirty Halloweens inside of these walls…we’ve never had a trick or treater. No little ghouls or goblins. 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.

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

The image is from https://www.narcity.com/ca/on/ottawa/things-to-do-in-ott/a-giant-mansion-in-ottawa-is-being-transformed-into-a-creepy-haunted-house-this-october

A Love for Horror

October 24, 2018October 25, 2023 / cigarman501 / 2 Comments

We are a week away from our annual celebration of St. Hallows Eve, originally a Christian three-day observance of All Hallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed. It has turned into something else but that too is okay. I don’t have a problem with little ghouls and goblins running about begging for treats…the tricks I worry about.

As with many subjects I choose to write about, the pathway I followed was a crooked one leading from sharing cute posts about “scary” things that have become a staple for Halloween to books and movies about horror. Not “real” horror. With what I read in the news, on social media and see on my local TV news stations, there is too much “real” horror.

I fell in love with the horror genre sitting in a lit class in high school. We were assigned Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart”. I was hooked. Later I would pound out a C+ book report on an old Royal typewriter after reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, a yarn that combined the supernatural allure of a hound from hell, murder, and Sherlock Holmes. The book report was just average, but I was still hooked.

Poe and Doyle were followed by Stoker’s Dracula and its underlying sexual innuendos. Vampires living off the blood of virgins… I read it in the “free love” Sixties, a vampire might have starved…well, not where I grew up.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, a book written in a competition suggested by her lover and future husband Percy and poet Lord Byron, was not well received at first, especially when the twenty-year-old authoress was identified, and religious debates ensued. I found it enthralling and didn’t understand the religious implications at the time.

I honestly don’t remember if I watched the movies based upon these books on late night “horrorfests” or read the books first. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff scared me on late-night reruns. I don’t guess it mattered to the chicken which came first or why it crossed the road so I’m not going to concern myself with the order of my interests, just that I have them.

I have watched all the horror movies in the world plus one and just as many books on that subject. Why does someone enjoy getting the bejesus scared out of himself? I don’t know. Adrenaline rush? The release of extreme emotion without the specter of reality hanging over his head? Maybe. I know it is an experience best shared with someone.

Years, and years ago I became enthralled reading Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, a rousing vampire yarn that gives too much information on how the bloodsuckers operate. They can’t come into your home unless you invite them, but they can hypnotize you into asking. Not fair. After reading a scene in which a character is levitating outside his older brother’s second-story window, tapping to get his attention, I heard “tap, tap, tap” on my second-story window. I was in bed alone and not about to go look. It was a limb from a tree planted too close to the building…maybe.

Later, when I coached high school football, I found it hard to sleep after Friday night games and would while away the sleepless hours watching an all-night horror marathon on the Turner mega station, TBS.

Some of those movies were awful, others comedic but one with the humorous name, Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, scared me out of my wits on a night when I was alone, with no one to hold on to, my screams heard by no one, no one to call. No, Ghostbusters hadn’t been released yet, not that I would have known their phone number.

I’m not a fan of most of what passes for horror in these modern days…there is the new, last Halloween sequel…I’ll see it…Maybe. The modern special effects are too graphic, and I tend to lean toward modern Sci-Fi now.

I come from a time when the best special effects were those imagined. Well, I did see a commercial for an LG phone involving zombie lovers and the song “You Sexy Thing”…it was funny when his arm fell off.

Many TV stations are having “fright week” to honor Halloween so maybe I can get a fix on some classic horror. If not, there is Netflix and I’ll remember the quote to Larry Talbot, The Wolf Man, from everyone in his small hamlet. “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night; may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

I don’t think we have wolfbane around here.

The video is a voice-over from Paul Anderson at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9ZAIej7jkg.

The image was liberated from http://rebekahganiere.com/tag/monster-mash/

For more of Don Miller’s musings or a book or six go to his author’s page at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

TAP, TAP, TAP

October 31, 2017October 24, 2022 / cigarman501 / 6 Comments

“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts” but vampires terrify me! DON’T LOOK OUT OF THE WINDOW! I told myself I was just being ridiculous. “Yes, I am but I ain’t taking no chances. I’m staying right here with the covers pulled over my head.” It wasn’t Halloween but it might as well have been.

It was a spring evening, a Saturday night in the mid to late Seventies…the year, not the temperature. I don’t know why I remember certain things like it was “a Saturday night in the mid to late Seventies.” I had just discovered Stephen King and was reading “Salem’s Lot.” For those of you who are unfamiliar with “Salem’s Lot,” it is a vampire yarn featuring bloodsuckers taking over an entire town.

Besides being scary as hell, there is an instructional section devoted to…vampire protocols, I guess? 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.

I had just read that a vampire couldn’t come into your home unless you invited them in when I heard it. TAP, TAP, TAP. Alone, with no one to run to or call, I’m hearing a TAP, TAP, TAP on the window of my apartment. My second-floor apartment…moments after reading how “little vampire Johnny” had hypnotized his little brother or sister to open a second story window and invite them in. You just can’t trust a vampire.

“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…mouthing… ”Come on man! Just invite me in, it won’t sting.” TAP, TAP, TAP.
There was a breeze churned up by a distant thunderstorm…”, it was a dark and stormy night” …and the window was open to take advantage of the spring coolness…the breeze was moving the curtains…” DON’T LOOK! DON’T LOOK!” Thunder rumbled…” DON’T LOOK! DON’T LOOK!” 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 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, to see what had caused the TAP, TAP, TAP. 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.