Wail of the Banshee (Modern Urban Tale)

The Banshee Wails for You!

It was late at night as I sat on the sofa watching the late night movie on TV.  The rest of the house was already fast asleep.   As the movie drew to a close, I glanced at my watch with weary eyes and saw that it was past midnight, the witching hour.  It was time for the head to hit the pillow.  I switched off the TV, locked the doors and windows and set the house alarm before climbing the stairs to the bedroom.

My wife was in bed and fast asleep so I tried to make my entrance into the room as quietly as possible.  The air condition was on and I was pleased to feel the coolness of the room.  I reflected on how fortunate I was to have air conditioning on such a hot and humid night.   After brushing my teeth, I thought of just sitting up in bed for a few minutes longer to read some blogs on my laptop computer.

Then all of a sudden, all the lights and the air condition unit all went off and I found myself in pitch darkness.  It was a power outage.  I was not too surprised as earlier that evening, I had seen some lorries and trucks belonging to the electricity utility company in the neighborhood which usually meant they would be messing about with the power lines and substations.  This often resulted in brief blackouts in the neighborhood that could last as briefly as a few minutes or in rare unfortunate occasions, as long as several hours.

I looked briefly out the window and could see that the entire street was is darkness  and while it was still cool in the bedroom, one could almost sense the oppressive heat and humidity of the night weighing heavily in the darkness.

I knew the coolness in the room would not last and I tried to lie quietly in bed and even tried to get some sleep, all the time hoping that the blackout would be a short one.  From sheer tiredness, I did get some sleep but woke up again at about 1.30 in the morning.  By this time, the coolness in the room had dissipated and the oppressive heat from the outside had penetrated.  With no ventilation, this room would soon become hot and stuffy.

I was beginning to sweat and feel very uncomfortable but knowing that I had a lot to do later that day,  I willed myself to sleep again.  My wife had remained unstirred as once she is asleep, it takes quite a bit to wake her.

I awoke again at about 3.00 am.  I was drenched in sweat and even when I sat up, I could feel rivulets of sweat rolling down my head and dripping off my nose and chin.  It felt like I had been in a sauna.  Unable to sleep, I tried sitting up and meditating to reduce my heart rate and heat generation while I continued to sweat buckets.  I kept looking at the bedside clock and hoped for the power to return soon.

If midnight is the start of the witching hour, then it has also been said that 4 am. in the morning is the darkest hour of the soul.  I was still sitting up but nodding in and out of consciousness in a kind of fitful sleep when suddenly it started.  It sounded like what one would imagine the wail of a Banshee might sound like.   It was extremely loud and shrill and the wail seemed to penetrate the inky blackness and stab at one’s very senses and soul.

My wife who had so far managed to sleep despite the heat, woke up in alarm and I had to do my best to calm her.  It took a minute for the sleep deprived senses to identify the shrill sound as our house security alarm going off.  Fearing someone may be taking advantage of the blackout to break into our home, I went downstairs, armed with a heavy handled walking stick, to investigate.

When I checked downstairs, I found the place was secure but the alarm siren continued its loud and irritating wail.  I then went to the alarm system panel and attempted to disarm it.  To my horror, when I got there, I saw that the alarm system panel was not powered and I could not disarm the alarm.

The house alarm has backup batteries but after more than four hours without mains electricity, the batteries had died out and this triggers the system “tamper” warning which set the alarm blaring.  The same batteries powered the alarm control panel and so I could not operate the panel to switch the alarm off.  Unfortunately, the alarm system speakers seemed to be on its own battery power and showed no sign of stopping.

By now the entire household was awake and I felt sure so was most of the neighborhood.  I spent the next hour and a half trying to get the alarm to stop wailing and failing that attempted with limited success in muffling the sound with the use of a cardboard box and some packing foam placed over the alarm loudspeaker.  All of this involved me climbing up and down ladders, doing some acrobatics and body contortions while sweating profusely from the heat and exertion and stumbling about in the light of a torchlight.

However, there was no peace to be had until the electricity supply was restored at about 5.30 in the morning and I was able to disarm the alarm.  By then, I was a hot, sweaty, sleepless wreck with a consistent ringing in my ear from close and prolonged exposure to the wailing Banshee.  No longer able to get any sleep, I greeted the dawn with a cup of coffee and bloodshot eyes.

I wish no one the wail of the security alarm banshee at 4 in the morning.

Author’s Note:  In Irish and Celtic cultures, the Banshee (or “woman of the side”) is a fairy creature that can appear as a beautiful woman but more often as a hideous hag.  It is said that when a Banshee appears and lets loose its awful wail, it is a sign that someone will soon die.

Cold, Wet, Hot

This is a composite post on three rambling thoughts which should not be confused with (although related) to my earlier post entitled “Wettest, Coldest, Hottest”.  This post is not as superlative as the previous one.

My first rambling thought was about the cold.  Have you noticed the new look of the blog with the picture of snow crystals and the aurora borealis?  It seems a number of my blogging friends are feeling the winter blahs.  That’s quite normal.  In fact last Monday is supposed to be the official Bluest Winter Day  (as in “singing the blues” and  not “the bluebird of happiness”) or so I read on someone’s seasonally affected blog.  Hence, I decided to try to bring some cheer by reminding all you good folks that winter can also be so beautiful. Feeling cabin fever?  Go out and watch the stars at night.  Enjoy a soak in a hot tub.  Run naked through your neighborhood in the cold.  (not necessarily in that order).

Ooo! Ooo! I just thought of another great idea.  Work out all your frustrations with an exciting game of ……….curling.  Why, it’s perfect.  Played with brooms and stones………..reminds me of “sticks and stones will break my bones”.     Yes, definitely an X-treme sport.

Speaking of order; it is fine when the bitter cold stays in Canada, greets Scandinavia or covers Siberia but as I said in the previous post, it is not natural for Texas to be colder than Canada.  Climate Change!!!!  The latest is that hundreds of people in North Vietnam had to be hospitalised due to a cold snap which has also killed hundreds of buffaloes.   Okay, rambling again.  To summarize this point – winter can be pretty but should stay where it belongs.

My second rambling thought is on how wet this start of the year has been.  Australia has already suffered “floods of biblical proportion” in Queensland and now the flooding has spread to Victoria and according to the newspapers, the experts anticipate even more floods to come in what is now being called the “once-in-two-hundred-years flood”.  This is already by far the costliest disaster suffered by the Australians.  And they were not alone, in the last two weeks, there were abnormal floods in Sri Lanka, Philippines, Brazil and Sweden amongst others.  The tragedy of the mudslide in Brazil which has killed at least 600 people with many more still missing was caused by a downpour that deposited one months rainfall in one hour.  Malaysia too is having floods and our neighbor Thailand had serious flood last month.  It’s been a very wet period.  Again, water brings life as long as it stays where it belongs.

Now you might think that my third rambling thought would be also about the weather.  But you would be wrong cause I am a squirrel and I have eaten one too many bad nuts.  So, this last thought is about fire – to warm all you frigid northerners and about the supernatural – to send chills down your spine. Mwahahaha (<- evil mad scientist laugh).

There is a story coming from a house in a village in the north of West Malaysia, very close to the border with Thailand.  The owner of the house is a 73 year old woman who lives there with her family including two grandchildren.  The house is built on land belonging to the Islamic Affairs Department and she has lived there for more than 30 years.  However, starting just before the new year, the occupants have been plagued by unexplained mini fires that appear to break out spontaneously all around the house.   The fires have burned clothing, prayer mats, furniture and even set the gas cooker on fire.    Reporters from one of the national dailies went to interview the family and while they were there, they witnessed five such fires.  There have been as many as twenty such incidents in a day.

Fourteen Islamic priests came to exorcise the fire-starting spirit.  They performed prayers, chants and rituals.  The leader of the group noted that the owner had a collection of ancient daggers and he believed that the spirit or spirits were attracted to these ancient artifacts.  However, despite their efforts, the fires resumed the next day.

The home owner has even now resorted to invite a well known Chinese kung fu master to carry out an exorcism.  This will be the next stage in the story.  As you can imagine, the whole family is in a terrible state.  How can you rest or sleep when you are expecting another unexplained fire?  These things are alive and well in Malaysia.  This tale has been brought to you by Spooky Squirrel.  Any theories my skeptical friends?

 

Innocent or .......?

 

 

The Genius behind Evil Dr. Horrible

A boy and a girl break into the school late at night. The girl is hesitant but the boy is insistent. It is clear that he is up to no good and you begin to worry that the petite, pretty blond will come to a horrible end. But it is the boy that is in for a sticky end as the girl is a vampire. The boy was surprised and so are we.

This is why I am a Joss Whedon fan. He is always taking our jaded expectations and turning them on their heads. The obvious story line becomes a roller coaster ride of the unexpected. This makes his stories so refreshingly different. He is always trying things that appear to be foolish but he makes it work. He can scare us, excite us, make us laugh and make us cry, all within a few minutes of amazing writing.

The scene described above comes from the TV series, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in which Whedon does a mix of teenage angst and the horror genre. Big nasty vampire baddies get there ass-kicked by a petite Buffy Summers who really just wants to survive school and be popular. The most popular episode of the series was a musical “Once more, with Feeling“. A musical. Can you believe it? But it worked. And, if you can have a musical episode, how about the episode “Hush” which was done with almost no dialogue (cause everyone lost their voice due to supernatural reasons). This creativity was rewarded with an Emmy nomination.

The cult success of that series led to the spin-off series, Angel. Again confounding stereotypes, the hero, Angel, is a vampire while nemesis is a firm of lawyers who had sold their souls to evil. Okay, maybe evil lawyers is not such a surprising concept but a hero vampire private eye is.

Then, came Firefly. The Firefly universe is a world of spaceships and space ports but whose outer planets look and feel like the old wild west. The hero is an ex-rebel space smuggler and again the most lethal person in his crew is a young girl, River Tam. This also became a big cult hit. So even though the networks pulling the plug on the show, fans drove the push for a movie which resulted in “Serenity”.

After this came Dollhouse, but I never got the chance to see this as it did not reach Malaysian shores. But what came next from Joss Whedon’s fertile mind is again a masterpiece of creativity and the unexpected. Kicking his heels during the Writer’s Guild strike in 2008, Joss came up with the idea of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog“, a 2008 musical tragicomedy miniseries in three acts, produced exclusively for Internet distribution where there is a villian that we like and who runs a blog and there is a hero that is obnoxious and distasteful and where everybody sings. Sounds like a ridiculous, disastrous concept?

On October 31, 2008, Time magazine named it #15 in Time’s Top 50 Inventions of 2008. It also won the People’s Choice Award for “Favorite Online Sensation”, and the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. In the inaugural 2009 Streamy Awards for web television, Dr. Horrible won seven awards: Audience Choice Award for Best Web Series, Best Directing for a Comedy Web Series, Best Writing for a Comedy Web Series, Best Male Actor in a Comedy Web Series (Harris), Best Editing, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Music. It also won a 2009 Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class – Short-format Live-Action Entertainment Programs.

Joss, keep it coming.

This alarming video records Dr. Horrible’s takeover of the Emmy Awards Broadcast in 2009

The Witch, The Lawyers and The Politician.

Well, it’s time for the Lone Grey Squirrel’s annual nod to Halloween (previous Halloween posts include The Oily Man, Of Ghosts and Monsters, A Halloween Tale and the Lady in White.)  Actually, Halloween isn’t a big event in Malaysia and so I never had the opportunity to dress up in a fancy costume.  I wonder what I might wear if I had the chance. Perhaps I could dress up as “Lurch” from the Addams Family or a rabid squirrel.  What might your favorite Halloween costume or character be?

Tall, Dark and Creepy

But I digress.  The title of this post may seem like the starting line of a joke but I assure you the story behind it is dark and creepy.

Malaysia is officially a Muslim country and more than 60% of the population is Muslim.  Islam came to this country around 1136 A.D. with the conversion of the Hindu King of the State-Kingdom of Kedah, Merong Maha Wangsa.  He would change his name to Sultan Muzaffar Shah.  However, before the onset of Islam in Malaysia, the Malay people had already a well established belief system rooted in the existence of supernatural beings and magic.  This belief system has survived even till today.

The Malay equivalent to a witch doctor or medicine man is the “bomoh”.  A good bomoh may be consulted to perform healings and blessings.  Event organisers may employ them to make sure there is no rain to spoil some festive occasion and football teams may employ bomohs to help them win games.  Some bomohs may also practice the dark arts or black magic and may be hired to put curses on people or to charm them to do something against their will.

For some readers, this belief system may seem antiquated and distant in the modern world of logic and science but in fact belief in the supernatural is very much alive in most of the world.  Cases involving the supernatural are reported frequently in the newspaper.  Other stories spread in whispers at the coffee shops.  Museum exhibits on the occult draw more visitors than exhibits on space exploration.

Mass hysteria is commonly and frequently reported especially amongst young girls at residential schools or factory dormitories.  The affected women may scream and shout or sometimes laugh hysterically.  After intervention by good bomohs, the victims seem not to remember anything.

Occasionally, a particular malevolent or mischievous spirit can kidnap a victim.  Currently, there is a case of a 22 year old woman who has disappeared from her family home.  The woman has disappeared a few times before and was later found stuck on top of trees or wandering in cemeteries.  There were reported incidences of rocks and gems falling apparently from the ceiling in her presence.  In the latest incident, the family reported hearing a loud sound and rushed to the living room in time to see a crystal marble rolling along the floor past the woman.  She suddenly bolted out of the house.  Neighbours reported seeing the woman being driven away  in her mother’s car but could not see the driver.  However, the car keys are still in the house and the car was locked.

Since then, she has sent text messages to her mother from her mobile home saying that she is on top of Mount Jerai (a mountain located 300 km away and which has been associated with the old belief system as enchanted).  She told her parents that she was taken by “orang bunian” – invisible, supernatural beings; that she tried to escape and was injured but that two spirit princesses of the mountain are nursing her wounds now and protecting her.  She remains missing at this moment.

Many Malaysians also believe very strongly in curses and charms.  Often, if someone behaves out of character, it is believed that he is a victim of a charm.  Often, people report being charmed into giving their money and belongings to a stranger.  They are not able to stop themselves nor are they able to remember things clearly after the incident.  Sometimes when a not too attractive woman ends up marrying a senior political leader or a millionaire business man, people do wonder if black magic was involved.

This finally brings me to the title of the post.  I shall start with the Witch and the Politician first.  Mona Fandey was a witch of some notoriety and fame.  Senior government leaders and politicians were said to be amongst her clientele. In 1993, Datuk Mazlan Idris, an elected state assemblyman, sought the help of Mona Fandey and her husband to bring him more riches and to help him rocket upwards in his political career.   He visited them often to seek their services and paid them handsomely for it.  However, according to the police, on one occasion, he participated in a ritual in which he lay down with his eyes closed to wait for “riches to fall from the sky”.  Instead of the anticipated riches, it was an axe that fell and decapitated his head.  He was then chopped up into 18 parts and partially skinned before being buried in a small hole near her home and covered with cement. It is speculated that it was a ritual killing.  The couple managed to get money out of his bank account and went on  spending spree before being caught by the police.

Anyway, as these stories illustrate, the belief and practice of black magic is very much alive amongst the quaking population.  This brings us to the lawyers.  In a meeting last month, religious leaders and lawyers met to discuss witchcraft.  Islam bans black magic and witchcraft, for it is a heretic practice to put one’s faith in something other than Allah.

So, the learned ones decided that it was high time to come up with a law to make sure those who are practicing witchcraft and cause harm to people be chargeable and prosecutable.  Of course, they first need to address certain issues like what kind of evidence would be admissible and deemed as proof of witchcraft.

This is not such an easy task.  Haron Din is a self proclaimed exorcist.  He is one of those lobbying for the anti-witchcraft law.  It is claimed that he once managed to exorcise a haunted and cursed location and transported out a whole bus load of “orang bunian”.  I do mean an actual bus.  His followers believed that he had performed a miracle but is a bus load of “invisible people” admissible evidence in court, m’ Lord?

No matter what one believes, there is a pronounced danger that such a law could result in the indiscriminate accusation of innocent people as witches.  Some one pinch me and tell me that “the witch, the lawyers and the politician” is just the first line of a bad joke instead of the start of a modern day Salem witch hunt, where the proof of innocence from witchcraft was to die from drowning when they submerged you under water.

I told you this would get creepy.  Happy Halloween.

Thank goodness science has taught us the proper way to deal with witches and other such superstition.  See video below.

Terror

“The strong bright light shone straight into my eyes, blinding me and making it difficult to see my assailant clearly.  Not that it made much difference because my tormentor hid his face behind a surgical mask.  However, he made no attempt to hide his instruments of torture which lay in neat shiny rows on the small table to the right of me.

Sometimes strange thoughts just enter our minds when we are gripped in terror.  I was thinking of shouting out that I was an American and that you couldn’t do this to an American.  But of course, I wasn’t and I knew with sinking heart that there would be no U.S. marines coming through the door to rescue me.

He was so close to me that almost all I could see was the cold steely eyes behind the mask.  With evil sarcasm, he said, “This might hurt ……..just a little”.  The cruel bastard.  It was obvious that he was enjoying this.

And then, it began.  I heard the awful sound of the high speed drill as he brought it closer and then there was the blinding pain and the taste of blood in my mouth.”

Regular readers will know that I suffer from D.P and that I am a D.Q.

There is a Sadist behind that Smiley Mask.

The Oily Man

“Oozing charm from every pore,

He oiled his way around the floor.

Every trick that he could play,

He used to strip her mask away.”
lyrics from “You Did It” (My Fair Lady)

Those lyrics tell of a slick operator with perhaps too much grease in his hair, applying his smooth moves to charm and disarm the ladies. I have always liked those few lines of prose. I find it amusing. But this “oily man” is quite benign compared to the one that this post is primarily about.Still in keeping with the Halloween spirit which is sticking around like peanut candy between the teeth, I am going to share with you the story of one of the Malay legends. I refer to the “orang Minyak” or Oily Man.

The Oily Man is basically a man who creeps about at night, completely naked and covered in black oil. The oil covering makes him hard to see in the dark and also makes him very slippery which helps him evade capture and also helps him squeeze pass tight spaces such as between the bars on a window.

There were in fact a rash of burglaries and rapes in Malaysia in the 1960s which were committed by men who had disrobed and covered themselves with oil and grease. Such cases still surface from time to time even till today. The perpetrators in these cases are entirely human.

However, the legendary Oily Man is said to be supernatural in nature. He is said to be able to be virtually invisible in the dark. Some say that he is also able to slip through spaces too small for humans to do so. It is said that the Oily Man had made a pact with the Devil. In return for giving him supernatural powers and wordly desires, the Oily Man must rape 21 virgins in 7 days.

A typical story would occur in a house or a dormitory where there may be more than one woman asleep in the room. The room may be locked and though the windows are open, they are secured with wooden bars or metal grilles. No ordinary intruder can enter but then the Oily Man is far from ordinary. He is able to slip through those bars while the girls sleep.

One of the women who is a virgin may suddenly awake to see a dark form over her with penetrating eyes which are visible even in the dark. She finds she can neither struggle or cry out. She is subsequently raped. Finally, she screams and her room mates rush to her assistance. It may be that they never see the orang minyak because it is said that he is able to make himself invisible to others apart from his victim. Alternatively, the orang minyak may be seen but he eludes capture on account of his slippery oiled skin and is able to escape via squeezing out through the window bars.

Till today, we sometimes hear of cases or incidents in female student or worker dormitories which are classified by authorities as examples of mass hysteria or are they really attacks by Orang Minyak.

Monsters Wanted Bad

Remember when men were real men, women were real damsels in distress and the monsters were real scary evil monsters. Ah, the good old days. As Halloween rolls by this year, it just isn’t the same anymore. It makes a decent horror fan want to shout out; “Where have all the Monsters gone?”

Monsters are meant to lurk in the dark corners of our mind or in the dark basements of our homes from where they go on a rampage of mindless maiming and killing of innocents just because that is what they do and they are good at it. However, these days, our beloved monsters have been given a makeover by the spin doctors of Madison Avenue.

Let’s start with Vampires. The two top hottest TV/Movie Vampire franchises at the moment are True Blood and Twilight. In True Blood, a synthetic human blood substitute has been created which means that vampires don’t have to suck on a living human anymore and so many Vampires try to mainstream and become like any other normal citizen but they face discrimination, social profiling and prejudices. It is the new civil rights movement; “Equal Rights for the Victimised Vampires.” If homosexuals fought to come out of the closet, vampires now fight to come out of the coffin, so to speak. Twilight takes the idea of the harmless vampire even further by introducing the concept of “vegetarian” vampires who choose not to harm humans.
Hmmm. So far from being the scary creature of the night penned by Bram Stoker, vampires it seem are socially disadvantaged, misunderstood and deprived of their rights. Heck, they can even be “vegetarian”.

Werewolves or shape shifters were always my most favorite of the evil night creatures. But again, the modern werewolf is less primal beast and more sexy man and puppy dog charms. True Blood’s Sam Merlotte changes into a cute puppy dog. Twilight’s Jacob is a big hit with the ladies but his wolf persona also seems very much domesticated canine rather than vicious beast.

Sam shaved (L) and unshaved (R)

Jacob’s Wolf impression isn’t so impressive.

And so it goes. One by one all our favorite monsters have been emasculated and given a metrosexual makeover. Below are some of the taglines that are being used to change the way we view monsters.

DRACULA :- Just a tall, very,very dark and handsome romantic stranger in the night.

Werewolves:- In every man, there is a puppy dog trying to come out.

Frankenstein’s monster:- A victim of a bad plastic surgeon. It could happen to any of you and has happened to many in L.A.

Witches:- Girls just wanna have fun.

The Squirrel wishes they would leave our monsters alone. Let them be the monsters that scared us in our childhood. Let them be all that they can be. Let them be BAD.

(Squirrel wants to know which is your all time favorite monster. Please take the poll on the side)

The Nutter and the Hag

This post is entitled “The Nutter and the Hag” but it could also have been called “the Humor and the Horror”. Essentially, it is an up-date of two posts which i did earlier this month.

THE HAG
In the post “Read Before Sunset“, I commented on the horror movie genre and the recent ascendancy of Asian horror movies and the relative dearth of really scary movies of late from Hollywood. However, I stand corrected. I just watched Sam Raimi’s new movie and return to the horror genre in the form of “Drag Me to Hell”. The plot was not the best but shall we say that it was sufficient of a platform to allow Mr. Raimi to showcase his directorial skills at filming an extremely creepy and scary movie.

It contains at least three of the five horror techniques which I described in the last post. It had levitation (which was very well done), it did a variation of the image in the back view mirror of the car and it had the old hag (see below).

Scary? And she’s just an old woman……we aren’t even talking about the evil spirits yet! I am a horror movie buff so it takes quite a lot to actually make me want to cover my eyes during certain times during the movie. In fact, half way through the movie, I felt I had already received more than my ticket’s worth of scares.

I think “The Exorcist” is still safely installed as the top honcho of horror movies but “Drag Me to Hell” is surely to become a horror classic with perhaps a placing in the top 5.

Want to see a horror classic in the making? Then go see this movie but be warned, it is not for the faint of heart nor for those already suffering insomnia. The Squirrel has spoken!

THE NUTTER
In the post “Nuts even Squirrels Can’t Love“, I posted a picture of a “Swamp-Thing”-type nutter sitting on the subway next to a clearly bemused woman. I then invited blog readers to make fun of the picture by suggesting the possible dialogue between the “Thing” and the woman.

The squirrel has only one thing to say to all of you who participated……….”FLEE!” “RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!”

The Thing has relatives and they were not amused!

Read before Sunset

I love horror stories. For some perverse reason, I like to be so scared that I pee in my pants. Coupled with my preference for spicy, hot, tongue scalding chili encrusted meals, that should be enough to label me as a masochist. Anyway, I started on this post late last night but was scaring myself so much I decided it would be better to stop and only continue during daylight hours if only to evade getting nightmares when I slept.

Anyway as I was saying, I love horror stories. It doesn’t even have to be a particularly good story. For example, the campy King of B-Grade Horror movies, “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” is so bad that it is good. You know what I mean?

However, as much as I like monster movies, I really, really like supernatural stories. When I was 12 years old, my 26 year old brother was supposed to take his girlfriend to watch the special midnight movie but for some reason, they had a tiff. I benefited from the rebound when he offered to sneak me in to see the movie which had an 18 only rating. I was thrilled. The movie was “The Exorcist” which in retrospect gives a clue to the subject of their lover’s tiff. Not unexpectedly, I was severely traumatised by the movie and could not sleep for weeks as I awaited an arm to come out of the wall to grab me.

Although Hollywood has come out with many outstanding supernatural horror stories, in recent years the far more scary movies have come forth from the imagination of Asian directors such as “The Ring”, “The Grudge”, and “One Missed Call”.

Below are some of the horror concepts that work well at getting my goosebumps up.

1. Shining eyes. Eyes that glow in the dark. Imagine looking around in the dark. Everything looks normal. Suddenly you do a double take and you notice two dots of glowing red in a dark corner or at the window looking in. Scary! This effect was used in “Amityville Horror” when two glowing eyes appear in the window.
2. Mirrors. Often a hint or glimpse of some horror in a mirror or shining surface is far more effective than showing the whole horror. This is probably because when you get to see the whole thing, it looks too much like a guy with makeup on. I used to have to drive along a jungle road at night. All around was dark except for my headlights. Occasionally, out of habit, I would look into the rear-view mirror. Fortunately all I saw was darkness. Can you imagine how I would freak out if something suddenly appeared out of the darkness in my mirror? The urban legend of Bloody Mary uses the concept of the mirror leading into the spirit world.
3. Images on Photos. Sometimes the horror is scene as blurry images on photos or as images on the negatives. This has an interesting horror factor when the story protagonist and the audience are suddenly aware that the entity had been along side them all the while. In one very scary Thai movie, the hero realises that he has been capturing images of a ghost when he takes pictures of his friends. He figures this out when his friends all die ghastly deaths. Now trying to protect himself, he uses a polaroid camera to try to see the ghost approaching him. He takes photo after photo but despite no image of a ghost, he still senses its presence. Finally he realises something and he points the camera on himself and when the photo comes out, he sees the ghost sitting piggy-back on his shoulder and smiling into the camera. Creepy!
4. Evil Clown. Take something that kids trust like a clown or a teddy bear and make it evil. Probably because it affects our childhood security blankets, this can be a very effective vehicle for representing horror. The clown, well, clowns around but when he smiles his broad smile, why are his teeth shaped like needles. This concept was famously done in Stephen King’s “It”.
5. The Old Hag. One of the scariest effect for me is the Old Hag. This is when someone sleeps and has a nightmare but it doesn’t end when he/she awakes. Instead, he wakes, he cannot move, he feels a weight on his chest making it hard to breathe and as the fog of sleep fades, to reveal the old hag’s ugly face just inches from his. The Old Hag is an idea that evolved from the idea of witches and/or the incubus/succubus. I think this is scary because we feel vulnerable when we sleep and we are afraid to wake up to such horrors. I know it isn’t quite the same but I once went to sleep in a jungle camp and woke up to a dead giant praying mantis right next to my face. I gave a little shreek. If it was an Old Hag, I would have jumped out of my skin. Speaking of skin, Ol’ Skinner has an Old Hag experience in the X-Files. In an interesting twist, although the X-Files’ Old Hag was darn scary, she turns out to be a benevolent protector.
6. Levitation. Levitation is a very good horror vehicle if used subtly. It’s most effective when you do not realise that there is any levitation to start with at the beginning. When you finally realise it, the horror seems to just roll over you. This was in the closing scene of “The Blair Witch Project” when the last survivor thinks she sees a friend and only realises a little late that his feet does not touch the ground.

What Horror concepts works for you?

Of Ghosts and Monsters

Here is another “tall tale” or rural folklore which when you think about it was the rural, agricultural community’s version of the modern urban legend. Perhaps, it is actually more correct to say that urban legends are the modern equivalent of these rural folklore. This one is said to originate in the rough farm country of Nova Scotia in the nineteenth Century. If it has changed in substance, it is only because I cannot fully remember the original version but in the ways of oral tradition, have embellished the story when needed. There are probably many versions of this core story around today.

A poor widow had to move into an old abandoned farm house which the locals all shy away from because they said it was haunted. Recently widowed and almost penniless, she also had to take care of her mother and her two young children. So, haunted or not, she was just glad to get a roof over her family’s heads. The whole family were of frontier stock; tough as nails and strong in spirit. She had two sons. The older lad, James, was a strapping, tall youth of 15 years and her second was but a toddler of five years of age. The toddler’s name was Tom, named after his late father and like his father was of stocky build and short temper. Indeed, if all their problems were not enough, many pitied the poor widow because she had to cope with young Tom’s wild and loud tantrums.

The family coped the best they could at the old haunted farm house. They did sense an eerie presence in the house but soon learnt that it could be accommodated as long as they did not venture into the basement larder at night. Whatever that presence was, it was strongest there. During the day, they ran down the stairs and as quickly as they could, take whatever food supplies they needed and then ran back upstairs. But they, never ever went down after sundown.

One cold and dark winter night, Tom was throwing a terrible tantrum in the kitchen and wanted applesauce on his boiled oats. He refused to eat and threw cutlery and plates about and yelled as loud as he could,”I want my applesauce!” His poor mother tried everything to placate the child but he was adamant that he wanted his applesauce and carried on and on. Finally, the Grandma said that she could not take the noise anymore and said that she would go down to the basement larder to get the applesauce. The widow reminded Grandma about the spirit down there but Grandma said she would risk it and go down.

At this point, young James, who felt the burden of being the man of the house said that it would only be appropriate that he go down and get his brother the applesauce. And so, with his heart pounding, he took a lighted candle and went down the dark stairs. When he got to the bottom, he opened the larder door and went in. Almost immediately a chill wind blew out his candle. He fumbled with his matches to re-light the candle but when he did, he saw a hideous ghostly face in front of him. The terrifying apparition said, “I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. Be afraid, be very afraid.”

James ran up the stairs screaming in fear and told his mother and Grandma about the ghost in the larder. Now as I have said, they were of frontier stock and tough people. Grandma knew that it took a lot to scare a brave lad like James but she also figured that she had faced up to many scary things in her long life and that she could stand up to this ghost. So Grandma, grabbed a lantern and went down the stairs. At the bottom, the hideous face appeared and went right up to Grandma’s face and bellowed in an angry voice, “I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. Be afraid, be very afraid.”

Grandma was so scared that she ran up the stairs, jumping two steps at a time despite her arthritis. Little Tom asked for his applesauce and when he saw that Grandma had not got it, he started yelling again.

Now a desperate mother will do amazing things for her children. Despite what James and Grandma saw, she could not stand not doing anything to placate her youngest child. So, girding up all her courage, she told herself to just close her eyes, run down and get the applesauce and run back up. And so, she tried but once in the larder, she had to open her eyes to look for the applesauce and there right in front of her was the hideous face and the ghost boomed out loudly, “I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. Be afraid, be very afraid.”

Up ran the poor mother without the applesauce and joined James and Grandma cowering at the far end of the kitchen.

When Tom saw that his mother also came back empty handed, he jumped from his chair and before anyone could stop him, he went down the stairs. They were all so afraid for Tom but none dared to go down after him.

After what seemed like an eternity, Tom came back up the stairs holding a bottle of applesauce and licking it from his hands. His mother scooped him up in her arms in relief but asked, “Tom, didn’t you see the Ghost with the One Black Eye down there?”

Still enjoying his applesauce, he lifted up his fist and replied, “Sure I did but now he has two black eyes!”

NOW FOR SOMETHING REALLY SCARY!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!