Favorite Ghost Stories-Shadow Manor

As I mentioned on Vlog-o-Rama #2, this month will be the month of guest bloggers' favorite ghost stories. Kicking off the series is Jenna, Keeper of Shadow Manor, of The Art of Darkness, one of my very favorite blogs.

My scariest story isn't intrinsically all that frightening; it's an Inuit legend that I happened upon in a book of ghost stories when I was in second grade.  Our teacher had assigned us one of the other stories to read--the 70s were an awesome time to be in elementary school--but I decided to read the rest of them as well, and this one just scared the everliving crap out of me.  But it isn't going to scare you because you aren't seven years old.  Probably.  So instead of trying to be spooky, I'm going to break it down Myths RETOLD style.

Image via Word-Wide-Matel.

 okay so there are these four hunters right

they're out in the middle of nowhere
and a blizzard starts up
which they somehow were not expecting
despite living in the arctic
and just before they all die of exposure they find an abandoned hut
this kind of thing always happens in fairy tales
people are always finding cottages in the wilderness
or falling into holes next to magic tinderboxes
or being chased into the one cave on the entire planet where Spock is hiding
not that I am bitter about that
so instead of thinking
finding this hut is way too convenient
and maybe it would be better just to freeze to death
they all think SWEET
and hustle right on in
they build a fire and go to sleep
and the next morning three of them wake up and find the fourth one dead
and instead of thinking logically
and yelling HOLY SHIT ONE OF US IS A MURDERER
and refusing to take their eyes off each other
they are all remarkably blasé about this
and I guess stack the body up in a corner somewhere
and go about their business
I don't know what their business would be
because they are stuck in an abandoned hut
in the middle of a blizzard
and the internet had not been invented
so maybe they just stared at the wallls all day
but that is not the point of this story
but the blizzard does not stop
so they have to spend another night in the hut
and they go to sleep
and the next morning only two of them wake up
and they look at the second dead body
and go, huh
this is not normal behavior you guys
so the blizzard still does not stop
and that night one hunter says
welp, two hunters dead in two nights
there's no pattern there
so I'll be going to sleep now
but the other hunter is smarter
or has maybe seen more horror movies
and decides to lay down
but only PRETEND to go to sleep
so he lays there for a while
and suddenly sees movement in the rafters
and one of the bundles up there rolls over
let's stop a minute and consider this
they have been stuck in this hut
with nothing to do
for three days
and there is not just one
but apparently several
mysterious bundles in the rafters
and nobody has considered investigating them
these hunters are made entirely of concentrated stupid
so the bundle rolls over a couple of times
and then a GIANT FUCKING SKELETON ARM
comes out of the bundle
and reaches down
and sticks a finger
into the back of the sleeping hunter's skull
and pulls out his liver
and then goes back into the bundle
somehow the remaining hunter does not shit himself lifeless
but instead deduces that the bundle contains a giant skeleton
which perhaps is not a hard conclusion to draw
but he further deduces that the skeleton was not buried properly
and thus is sad
and so is consoling itself by eating livers
and a fava bean and chianti joke is way too easy here
so I will simply inquire
why the skeleton thinks that eating livers
will make it less emo
so the hunter waits until morning
when I guess the skeleton will be napping
and then kicks the stove apart
and runs out of the hut
and instead of continuing to run until his legs are worn to nubs
he turns around and watches the hut burn down
and the doorknob rattles for a while
like something is trying to escape
but eventually it stops
which is kind of a shame
because a giant flaming skeleton bursting out of the door
would be awesome
so the last hunter defeats the skeleton
and since the story never says the blizzard stopped
he probably freezes to death
but at least he isn't turned into liver snacks by eldritch horrors
the moral of this story is to always go hunting
with companions who are dumber than you

Halloween Memory-Shadow Manor

Shadow Manor runs the fantastic Art of Darkness blog, and really captures my imagination with this memory. As you all know, I came from L.A., too, and never carved pumpkins more than a couple of days before Halloween. This writing really makes me want to schedule a trip to the other coast for a taste of autumn.

Halloween has been something of a leitmotif with me, so choosing a single memory is difficult: One of the earliest Halloweens I can recall involved me dressed as Peter Pan, with a costume sewn by my mother and pan pipes welded by my dad out of scrap metal. There was the Halloween I co-hosted a "mystery" dinner party themed around a homebrewed ghost story. Heck, I even got married on Halloween.

I think, however, that my favorite Halloween memory is a bit more prosaic: It was simply experiencing my first October on the East Coast.  I grew up in Southern California, where palm trees abound and deciduous trees are confused; at some point during the year they'll half-heartedly drop a few leaves, but autumn in Los Angeles is dull brown. Autumn there is also warm; we'd traditionally carve our pumpkins no more than a week before Halloween, lest they be soft and moldy by the big day.

But then I moved to Virginia, where nature takes autumn seriously. I vividly recall my first October on this coast, realizing that this was the season I'd been looking for all my life. It got cold at night, with a marvelous, crisp quality to the air. We carved pumpkins at the beginning of the month and I was thrilled to be greeted by them when I came home each evening. The trees turned colors that I had only seen in storybooks, then suddenly were reduced to stark, bare branches. Plump barn spiders, perfectly outfitted for the season in orange and black, appeared seemingly out of thin air and set up shop on the front porch. My soon-to-be father-in-law had a large garden and he bound all of his dead corn stalks into a proper stook.


I remember standing outside in the chill dark one evening shortly before Halloween, looking at the moon through a tangle of clawlike branches, and really understanding for the first time why so many ancient cultures believed that autumn was when the year died. I could imagine the veil between worlds growing thinner, and strange things on the other side restlessly awaiting their chance to visit. I gave my jack-o'-lantern a pat, went back inside, and realized that I was finally exactly where I belonged.