Sleek, stylish, discrete. All hail the Queen of Vampires, Catherine Deneuve,
from the 1980 horror movie The Hunger.
A Haunting Strain of Music, Part 2
Some “lively” music always makes work go more
quickly, don’t you agree?
| Rockabilly fun with The Creature from the Black Lagoon, who also moonlights as a record juggler. The title is a pun on “instrumentals.” |
| Swedish lady sings some early rock and roll. The picture is cool and shows she’s not afraid to have some fun with the idea. |
| Dracula gets into the act. I can guess this was a popular instrumental because there are even foreign versions of the song. The picture is from a British Hammer horror film, but Christopher Lee’s handsome face has been scrubbed out and replaced with this pointy-eared, goofy looking creature. |
| Spike Jones was a musician and bandleader who satirized popular music of the day with comedic singers and goofy sound effects, much like Weird Al Yankovik did in the 1980s. Teenage Brain Surgeon makes fun of rock and roll and then-current movies like “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.” |
| This illustration looks like one of the older ones, but it is actually fairly recent, from the 1990s punk band The Misfits. Here’s their cover of Monster Mash. |
| Bang dem bones! The skeleton certainly looks complacent being the medium for this cheesy cocktail lounge jazz music from Vic Geldman. |
| The Mummies, by their LP cover, look like they’re from 1965, but the music actually dates from 1992. Their blistering sound is pure, raw punk. |
| Calling all monsters! Clockwise from bottom left, we’ve got Toho Studios creations Anguirus, Godzilla, Ghidorah, Minilla the Son of Godzilla, Mothra in its larval stage, Varan, and Gorosaurus. The pic seems haphazardly slapped on to sell some Japanese surf-punk music, including this gem, Nati Bati Yi, by The Spiders. |
| Yokai Monsters: One Hundred Monsters was a late 1960s Japanese tongue-in-cheek horror movie that serves as a backdrop for these guys, why may be comedians (not sure, because I don’t know Japanese.) I couldn’t find the music music, but you can see the movie trailer here. |
A Haunting Strain of Music, Part 1
“Don’t you know how I hate being disturbed when I’m categorizing my record collection?”
| Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I like the spookiness, the masquerade element, and the rich trove of vintage memorabilia generated over the years… like these LP and 45 covers. For fun, I looked up the music as well. |
| The rich baritone voice of Boris Karloff, best known for narrating the Christmas special “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” makes for some deliciously frightening Halloween listening. Includes some early electronic music effects. |
| Surfing and monsters! I am so there. The green girl in front could be Annette “Funeral”-cello herself. Note the pun on the Whiskey-a-Go-Go club in Los Angeles at the top. Exuberant mid-60s dance pop. |
| Nothing subtle about this one. “Surf Monsters” seems more fun though. But I could dance to either. |
| You don’t tell say! If so, why are these two — who must be portraying preachers of a sort — so freakin’ happy? And why does Satan look like he walked off a South Park cartoon that was yet 40 years into the future? Questions, questions.
The music looks like it’s jukin’ jumpin’ Rockabilly from the picture, but the title song is more gentle, a country ballad with vocal harmonies reminiscent of the Everly Brothers. In fact, I’d say this song, or songs like it, inspired many nostalgic 1960s imitations, such as The Rolling Stones’ “The Girl with the Far Away Eyes” and the Beatles’ “Rocky Racoon.” Recommended. And… do I hear Sir Paul McCartney’s “Mull of Kintyre” in the tune as well…? |
| Of course Satan is real. Here’s Mr. Bad News himself! I would so listen to the whole of this album too. After all rock n’ roll was once known as the devil’s music. I also like the album cover where Satan’s face has two different expressions on his left and right sides: evil, and evilest! |
| People smoked, drank, and went to clubs a lot in the 1950s and 1960s (or threw parties at home where they hoped to replicate a club atmosphere, with smoking and drinking) and artists like this provided background music when there wasn’t conversation going on, or someone wanted to dance. The most common themes were those of “exotic” places around the world, like Polynesia or Turkey, presented in a tongue-in-cheek martini-swilling style. Horror and science fiction themes were also popular. This album combines them both, with an “African” mask. |
| More horror/exotica from a bandleader with a similar-sounding name. The cover depiction here, however, is more grotesque and less fun. |
Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/25/17: Bogies
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They are the things that make children wake screaming, blind with fear, in the middle of the night. They are the things that slip through the cracks under bedroom windows, the things that turn the knobs of bedroom closets and push them open with agonizing slowness, while the children cower under their blankets and pray that the old stories about monsters not being able to touch them through their sheets are true.
They aren’t. —Innocents on Night Terrors |
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Things that go bump in the night
| Krakhuan: An evil spirit in the shape of a rhinoceros. It walks on two human legs with oversized feet and has a long tail with a poisoned sting.
Mabafoon: An evil fairy that steals the lips from sleeping human children and replaces them with weasel skin. Chroscrum: A demon in the form of a huge albino hyena. He has a loud, commanding voice and sends hordes of bats to punish his enemies. Threehatch: An evil spirit in the form of a decaying, skeletal fox covered with carrion beetles. Kilplacine: An evil, sorrowful spirit that has the upper part of a gaunt corpse with wrinkled white skin and the lower part of a crocodile. Vlangthrut: A demon that looks like a handsome youth, but his flesh is covered with brown spikes. He has the wings of a pterodactyl and a hideous cackle. Yathtrice: A demon in the shape of a black elephant with four human arms, two tails, and an aura of impending doom. Mzabella: A horrible old crone who turns men into rats with her touch. She has two enormous pincers instead of hands and wears the flayed hide of a giant salamander. Alrathy: A female demon who has the upper part of an elf-maiden and the lower part of a small, fluffy dog. She has hypnotizing eyes and speaks in a harsh tone. Scorpadrox: A terrible goddess with two inhuman heads, those of a jackel and a hyena. She has oozing carbuncles on her back and lures men to doom with her singing. Lephuan: An infernal spirit that, when summoned, appears as a sea cucumber with a human head. It speaks in a girl’s voice. Oniprang: A demon with the body of a musk ox and the head of a cobra on a long, flexible neck. It mocks believers of the One True God and attempts to lure them to hell with gifts of treasure. |
Out of Death
Out of Death, something beautiful.
(18th century carved horse skull)
Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/18/17: Geisterbahn
Do you enter? I dare you.
Geisterbahn is German for ghost train, the popular amusement park ride that carries thrill-seekers into dark, eerie tableaus designed to thrill and shock them. The most elaborate of these are found at Munich’s Oktoberfest. In the US, these rides are known as Spookhouses, or Haunted Houses. Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion is an example of the best of the best of them.
Around Halloween, another type of Geisterbahn crops up — the live action haunted house, usually presented by charities, but often featured as part of a regular park’s seasonal offerings. These can be quite elaborate and some are definitely not for kids.
Here’s a list of randomly-generated names for your own haunted house attraction.
Haunted House Attractions
| Ghost Forest
Killer Plunge Mutant Raceway Psychoshot Vampire Rebellion Ghost Ninja Satan’s Circus Medusa Mania The Gorgon’s Nest Psycho Prison The Joker’s Scream |
Haunted Shadows
Defcon Planet Voodoo Hospital Satan’s Holocaust Demon Carnival Killer Train Zombie Warning Mutant War Midnight Journey Murder Planet Mummy Madness |
Ecanus, the Angel of Writers
| Ecanus, I seek to become more than a writer.
I desire to be an author and I ask for your Divine Assistance in helping me attain that goal. Fill my mind with original thoughts and ideas so that I may become the successful writer that God created me to be. Through Jesus Christ’s Precious, Pure and Holy name I pray. Amen. |
I am not a religious person, so imagine my surprise when I came across this entity while doing some research on angels. My latent Christianity was triggered, but in a good way.
Fire at the Wax Museum
After a fire at Madame Tussaud’s.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/11/17: Tiamatan Clan Names
This beautiful illustration was from the Romanian cover of the book.
Science fiction writer Joan D. Vinge wrote a fairy tale/space opera mashup in the early 1980s called The Snow Queen, which borrowed from the Hans Christian Anderson tale of the same name. Most of the action took place on a frigid water planet named Tiamat, where humans were split into two clans: Summers and Winters. (The seasonal cycle lasted 150 years, so Summers ruled in the warm months, Winters in the colder ones.) In addition, there were also family names. Vinge gave us only a few of them: Dawntreader, Bluestone, Ravenglass, Goodventure, Wayaways. But that was enough for me to extrapolate and randomly generate some more.
(These names would also work well for Elven races.)
Tiamatan Clan Names
| Seaglass
Firestone Greenflight Soulspinner Starstone Dawnglass Starspun Goodstone Sunwatcher Skywave Skywatcher Saltfeather Goodmoon |
Firemoon
Sunfeather Greenways Snowflight Sunstrider Clearmoon Bluewoven Bloodstone Seaway Icegrass Dawnwatcher Goodstrider Snowvane |
Black Queen V
Cruelty was actually one of her better qualities.
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