The Goddess’s Ten Favorite Creepy Books from Childhood

15 Jul 201519 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / 2 Comments

I told you guys I’d be back to this blog shortly, and here I am. Before I get into today’s post, I wanted to acknowledge the horrible news I heard earlier this morning: one of Nick Cave’s 15-year-old twin sons, Arthur, has died in a tragic accident, falling from a cliff in Brighton. As I’ve written before, Nick Cave is a musical and literary hero of mine, and I cannot begin to imagine what he and his family are going through right now. For what it’s worth, I extend my most heartfelt condolences.

And now on to less soul-crushing subjects. It is perhaps fitting that I chose today to focus on childhood books I loved and that helped to shape my writing identity. These ten books, among the hundreds I read growing up, have stuck with me for various reasons over the years, and I would recommend any of them unreservedly to older children and adults alike. To make the experience more authentic, I even tried to find the cover art I remembered for each book, though I failed in a couple of circumstances, because the 60s and 70s were a long time ago, folks. So, without further ado, here they are, in descending order:

10. The Face of Danger by Willo Davis Roberts (1972)

I have no idea why this little trade paperback made such a lifelong impression on me, but such are the quirks of the writer’s brain, I suppose. It’s not strictly a horror story, being more of a gothic thriller/mystery type of thing, and it’s not really for children either, I guess, but after discovering it in one of the towering piles of books in my grandfather’s old house, I read it over and over again in total and abject fascination. It tells the tale of a homely woman named Sharlee whose face is so drastically disfigured in a car accident that plastic surgeons are basically obliged to give her an entirely new face, one that is strikingly beautiful. I was transfixed by the idea of a lifelong plain Jane suddenly being thrust into the entirely unfamiliar milieu of the beautiful people (and all their fabulous gowns, not gonna lie), and the struggles that ensued. Sharlee is whisked away to a remote mansion by her new, wealthy suitor, where it comes to pass that there’s some pretty shady shit going on with the family she meets there, relating back to the woman whose visage hers was modeled after. I haven’t read this in years, but I remember it being pretty harrowing in a “dark romance novel” sort of way. Fun fact: While I was researching this blog post today, I discovered that Willo Davis Roberts also wrote one of my other beloved childhood books, the profoundly depressing child-abuse saga Don’t Hurt Laurie. I was kind of a morbid kid, you guys.

9. The Ghost of Opalina, or Nine Lives by Peggy Bacon (1967)

I must have checked this out of my elementary school’s library at least a dozen times. I adore ghost stories, and I adore cats, so a book that combined those things was of course going to be like a magnet to my wee, nugget self. It’s essentially a frame story about three children who move into a rambling old house and find a talking ghost kitty with glowing opal eyes in the attic. Opalina, as she’s called, tells them all about her nine lives and the people who had lived in the house over the decades. Even though I was never a huge fan of “historical” fiction growing up, I was absolutely spellbound with this one, and I remember the illustrations (done by the author) being charming as well.

8. The Ghost of Windy Hill by Clyde Robert Bulla (1968)

This little blue hardback was a frequent resident of my backpack and bedside table after I bought it from one of those wonderful book fairs Scholastic periodically held at my school. If I remember correctly, there didn’t actually end up being a ghost in the story (and please correct me if I’m remembering it wrong), but there was a fantastic creepiness about it just the same: The old drafty farmhouse, the mysterious woman in white with her rag bag, the tragic Bruno and his horrible father. I have a vivid memory of the mentions of the spring house (which I had never heard of before and found intriguing), and the placing of bells on the doorknobs to try to catch the “ghost.” Good stuff.

7. The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (1972)

More feline frights! Jessica is a cat-hating pre-teen who finds a blind, hairless little kitty she grudgingly adopts and contemptuously names Worm. But apparently there’s more to Worm than meets the eye, because soon afterward, Jessica begins behaving strangely, as if the cat is possessing her and making her do terrible things. Is Worm a witch’s familiar? Is Jessica projecting her own unhappiness and destructiveness onto the defenseless animal? It’s a fascinating psychological study that never clearly states whether there’s anything supernatural going on. As an aside, I believe this was the first audio book I ever listened to (on a series of cassettes, because I am old).

6. The Mystery of the Fiery Eye (Three Investigators Classics) by Robert Arthur (1967)

I was a big fan of the Alfred Hitchcock-sponsored Three Investigators series. They struck me as much cooler than the Hardy Boys books, which always came across a little too goody-two-shoes for me (I was also way more into Trixie Belden than Nancy Drew, but that’s neither here nor there). I read most of the 43 books in the series at one stage or another; I think I felt an affinity with chubby smarty-pants Jupiter Jones, and I absolutely fucking loved the idea of the investigators’ headquarters being in a trailer that was hidden under a pile of scrap in a junkyard and accessed through a series of tunnels. My favorites in the series included The Secret of Terror Castle, The Mystery of the Screaming Clock, and The Mystery of the Silver Spider, but Fiery Eye was hands-down my jam. I’ve had a long fascination with gemstones anyway, particularly rubies, and I was also enchanted by the busts of historical personages that figured prominently in the mystery.

5. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (1972)

Snyder’s second appearance on the list. I first heard about this book on that old PBS show with John Robbins. Does anyone else remember it? He had one called “The Book Bird” and one called “Cover to Cover”, and he would feature a book or two on each episode (I distinctly remember White Fang, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Sea Egg, The Bridge to Terabithia, Tuck Everlasting, and Misty of Chincoteague being highlighted). Excerpts of the book would be read and he would illustrate them. I loved the crap out of that show, and though I found a few episodes of it on YouTube, the episode lists on the internet don’t mention The Headless Cupid (or Ellen Raskin’s Figgs and Phantoms, for that matter, which I also swear I saw on there), so now I’m thinking my entire childhood was a lie and I don’t know how to behave. At any rate, this book had everything that preteen me loved: weird teenage girls, possible witchcraft, a ghostly mystery in an old house. The main character of Amanda, with her pet crow, crazy braids, and silver forehead triangle, was one of the aspirational figures of my youth. I thought she was the coolest chick ever.

4. The Ghost Next Door by Wylly Folk St. John (1972)

I loved this book so much as a kid, and for a long time afterward I only remembered the cover and the general story outline, but not the title. But thanks to the miracle of Google-Fu, I was able to track it down and revel in the magic once again. A little drowned girl, a spooky blue rose, a cement owl with marble eyes, and that vague sense of ambiguity about whether the ghost is real all added up to a chilling read. Easily one of my childhood favorites, and one that still holds up when read as an adult.

3. Alfred Hitchcock’s Supernatural Tales of Terror and Suspense by Various Authors (1973)

I wrote a post about another of these Hitchcock-edited anthologies, Stories That Scared Even Me, right here, but this one got just as many read-throughs, and I still own a worn hardback copy of it. There are only eleven stories, but all of them are great, and I have to give it props for introducing me to what is still one of my favorite short stories of all time, “The Triumph of Death” by H. Russell Wakefield (which I discussed a bit here). Other standouts include a second Wakefield story, “Mr. Ash’s Studio,” a rare Raymond Chandler tale called “The Bronze Door,” a creepy undertaker yarn called “The Pram” by A.W. Bennett, and a horrific model-train story by Alex Hamilton, “The Attic Express.”

2. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (1978)

I liked all of Ellen Raskin’s books, but this one was my favorite by a mile. It’s more mystery than horror, but I was so delighted by it that for years I’ve been contemplating doing a similar puzzle-style story (it’s actually in the planning stages at the moment, though I still have a lot of bugs to work out). The characters are hilarious, the writing sharp, the mystery intriguing. I actually re-read it just a few years back and I enjoyed it just as much. A classic. Why hasn’t there been a big-budget movie of this again?

1. The House With a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs (1973)

If you read this previous post, you shouldn’t be surprised that this came out on top, because it’s easily my favorite young adult book of any era, and I don’t see that changing at any point in the future (sorry, J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman). Again, it hit all the right notes with me when I first read it: There was a creepy old house with secret passages and randomly changing stained-glass windows, witches and wizards, a hand of glory, necromancy, a scary countdown to doomsday, and those wonderful illustrations by Edward Gorey. Everything about this book was magical, and every time I reread it (which I do, quite often), I am transported back to that time in my childhood when all I ever dreamed about was ghosts and witches and hauntings and delicious creepiness that I wanted to utterly infuse my life forever (which it has, to a large extent, so I’ve got that going for me). I just can’t recommend this one enough; I wanted to live in its terrifying yet whimsical world, and if offered the chance to do so now, I would not hesitate to move right into that wacky mansion in New Zebedee and pile ice cream on my hat. Just talking about the book makes me want to dive back into it and forget about reality for a while, so I’m off to snatch up my purple-globe-topped cane, peer into my history-reenacting egg, and resurrect the corpses of some evil, long-dead wizards. If I don’t bring about the end of the world through these activities, I will return with more of my nostalgic and rambling posts very soon. So until next time, Goddess out.

The Mammoth Mountain Poltergeist on Jim Harold’s Paranormal Podcast

13 Jul 201519 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

Greetings, minions! Sorry I’ve been neglecting you, but I’ve really been inundated with work and haven’t had much chance to write any new stuff for this here blog. I will get back to it as soon as I can, but in the meantime, I took the GoH and I’s appearance on Jim Harold’s Paranormal Podcast and edited it down to the half hour that was just us, plus made a little video with photos from the book. So if you’d like to watch and listen, here you go:

Scary Silents: “The Fall of the House of Usher”

29 Jun 201519 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

Welcome to the latest installment of Scary Silents! I’m doing another short one this time, but really, it shouldn’t matter much because this one is just excellent, and I’m sort of baffled at how it doesn’t get as much attention as some of the other films of the period.

Clocking in at a little over thirteen minutes long, this loose 1928 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” was directed by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber. It’s visually stunning, utilizing a lot of cool prism and silhouette effects to give the whole thing a gloriously gothic look that suits the story very well. This version on YouTube has a lovely modern score done by Colin Z. Robertson of Hands of Ruin, and the picture quality is sharp and beautiful, so check it out:

After the title cards, we open onto a neat effect of the pages of Poe’s story overlapping across the screen, which soon fades to a striking shot of a huge gray sky with a castle and a man on horseback silhouetted against it. Then there’s one of those kick-ass prism shots of overlapping staircases, which are then pierced by a crack going down the screen which splits to reveal the inside of the house, with a woman sitting in a chair at the end of a shadowed hallway. So far this whole thing is just stylish as fuck, and I’m having a little gothgasm over it already, so you’ll have to excuse me. Ahem.

The woman, obviously Madeline Usher, gets up from her chair and goes into the dining room to join her brother Roderick. Both of them are wearing outfits and makeup I would kill for, with Roderick’s eyebrows being particularly impressive and drag-queen-like. Madeline has brought some flowers that she puts in the vase on the dining room table, and Roderick pulls her chair out for her, and it’s all very genteel, dontcha know. Madeline pushes her wine glass toward Roderick, all BE A DEAR AND HOOK ME UP WITH SOME BOOZE, BRO, and he has the black-gloved servant pour her some, after which she looks at him lovingly, thinks to herself IMMA DRINK THE HELL OUT OF THIS WINE, and proceeds to do exactly that, getting a little wistful expression on her face, like that’s a damn good vintage. Maybe it’s Amontillado, yes? It was certainly Fortunato’s favorite.

Then there is an odd shot of a black screen, with a covered silver dish floating in the center. It opens, and I can’t quite tell, but it looks like maybe a coffin goes in there and then the lid comes down on the dish. So someone put a teeny coffin on the plate in lieu of Madeline’s dinner, and this is a way bigger deal than just replacing her coffee with Folder’s Crystals, I think. The servant puts the covered dish in front of her, and she already looks anxious about it, like she knows there’s gonna be something in there other than the kale and tofu salad she ordered. The servant (who we don’t see, other than his black gloves) sorta waves the tray around weirdly before setting it down, and Madeline lunges toward it to open it, all STOP MOVING THE TRAY AROUND, DIPSHIT, I’M FAMISHED, and then the servant opens it a little to show her, even though we in the audience can’t see it. Madeline’s all WTF, WHERE’S MY SIDE OF CURLY FRIES, and she puts her hands to her cheeks in shock and the camera angle goes all askew.

Then we fade to a closeup of Madeline with her eyes closed, looking like someone dropped some roofies in her wine, and the covered dish is prominent in the foreground. Then it looks like she falls asleep, and there’s a shot of Roderick, wine in hand, looking at her like WHAT ARE YOU UP TO NOW, MISS CRAZY PANTS, and then he approaches her very slowly, pretty much leaning right into her face. She opens her eyes and stands up, lookin’ all hypnotized and shit, and Roderick is just looking at her all the while, like HUH. There’s a floating effect of what looks like that coffin again, and I guess only Madeline can see it, because she just zombies out of the room while Roderick watches her retreating back. I’m left to wonder if this is a common occurrence at the Usher dinner table, Madeline spacing out after the first course and wandering off like that. Maybe she never liked the food that was being served but didn’t have the heart to say it, so she got into the habit of faking a fugue so she could sneak out later for a sack of White Castles. Just speculating here.

Let’s spend the evening tripping balls.

Next is a nicely atmospheric shot of rain falling into a puddle, and then the horse-riding silhouette guy arrives in the most expressionist manner possible. He rings the doorbell, and there’s a shot of a bunch of bells ringing crazily (tolling of the bells bells bells bells, y’all), and then there’s Madeline walking through the darkened house, presumably to answer the door, but I can’t tell where she is in relation to anything else because everything is dark. The door opens by itself, I think, and the silhouetted guy comes in, only now he’s not silhouetted and there’s two of him like one of those high school band photos from the eighties, where he’s full length in the background and then there’s a faded closeup of his face at center frame. He’s wearing a rad top hat, and at first I thought he was also wearing war paint, in the form of a black line bisecting his face, but I think that’s just the background coming through the fade. He enters, gothically, and sees Madeline as she walks down a hallway away from him.

I got lost on the way to my “Cabaret” audition. Sorry to trouble you.

Madeline stops before a staircase, which is moving like an escalator, and she looks at it like FUNNY, I DON’T REMEMBER LIVING IN THE MALL OF AMERICA, and then there’s a creepy shot of top hat dude, and I guess he DOES have war paint on, because he just came from an Adam Ant cosplay party. Madeline walks past the stairs and does a dramatic JUST CAN’T EVEN kinda gesture, and then on the wall behind her is a huge shadow of a hammer or gavel banging, as though it’s hitting her. She’s all crouched down between more moving staircases that are presumably carrying invisible passengers to housewares, and then she faints and disappears into the shadows. There are more shots of staircase looking things moving and heaving, and this is actually a pretty cool-looking effect, very disorienting and indicative of the unfolding madness. There are shots of other moving things that I can’t tell what they are, though they sorta look like UFOs.

Then Madeline is reaching toward a wall, and either Roderick or top hat guy are standing near her, and the camera goes all skewed again as she reaches out. Then there are more UFOs, because this is clearly a whole invasion of craziness, you guys. Then there’s a close-up of Madeline’s face, and she has a black cloak and a black veil, and a black-gloved hand lifts the veil away from her face and then puts his hand on her chin and closes her mouth, because she was attracting the flies, y’know, standing there with her mouth hanging open that way. But then her mouth just falls open again, so I’m not sure what he thought he was accomplishing with that. He then closes her eyes, though, and that seems to stick.

Then we just see Madeline’s chest, and a black glove copping a feel over her clothes. Then a hammer comes down a whole bunch of times against a black backdrop, and then the hammer falls to the floor, followed by two black gloves. Then there’s Roderick looking at something and seeming all wigged out, but we don’t see what he’s looking at.

Then there are a bunch of prismic shots of Madeline’s sleeping face, and then Roderick emerges through one of those crazy expressionist doors that’s all jacked and crooked, and he looks every inch a life-sized ventriloquist dummy. He sees some shadows in the hall, and swipes his hand across his eyes, and then he sees that the hall is doing all that weird prism shit again, and at this point he must be thinking that the servant must have dosed them both. There’s a couple shots of Madeline’s big ol’ hand reaching for him, and more hammer shadows. And then Roderick is coming down the stairs swinging his arm as though he’s using the hammer, although he isn’t holding anything. Then he sees a shadow of a big top hat on the wall beside him and is all WTF, and then he sees an actual top hat and coat set on a table or something, and he just looks at it like OH, WE MUST HAVE A VISITOR, BUT DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THAT, TOO BUSY PRETENDING TO HAMMER. Then Madeline is walking around with both her arms raised, still in her trance, and then there’s like ghosts of her lurking around, and Roderick is all looking at them like WHUT, and then he sees like piles of books floating around in front of his eyes, and at this point I kinda feel like maybe the Ushers might benefit from having their house checked for a carbon monoxide leak, because shit’s getting weird in here.

Roderick sees the top hat bouncing off the floor in a backwards-running shot that makes it look like it’s kinda floating, and then there’s a prism shot of blank book pages, and then there’s Roderick looking like he’s about to blow chunks, while in the foreground, someone turns blank pages in one of the books. Then white letters begin swimming in and out of the screen, and it looks like they spell BEAT, or maybe BETA, as in, these hallucinations are still being beta-tested, so all features may not be available. Then the book floats and turns pages, with the top hat guy floating behind them. Then there’s another word swimming around, and this time it’s CRACK, so I guess now we know what substance the Ushers have been ingesting, so that’s nice.

This is why Nancy Reagan told us to just say no.

Then there’s a shadow of Madeline appearing to lift up the lid of a coffin, or maybe a grand piano, and then there’s more letters, RIPPD and SCR followed by EAM. More shots of Madeline, more moving stairs, more Roderick with white letters floating around his head that I can’t decipher this time. More prisms, shots of Madeline’s feet. Then the top hat guy is sneaking up behind Roderick, perhaps so he can inquire where on earth they obtained the really quite fantastic drugs they both appear to be on, and then Roderick suddenly points, and Madeline is up there, looking all ghostly and shit, with black hollowed out eyes.

Am I Siouxsie yet?

She tackles him and they both go down, and then top hat guy runs over there and appears to wrestle with someone for a second before noping the fuck out of the joint, leaving only his wee silhouette behind. Then there are shots of masonry falling, and water splashing, and what seems to be a blurry shot of a moon reflected in the water. Then, fade to black.

Now, you may have noticed from this frustratingly vague recap that if you had never read Poe’s story (and I don’t see that as being a problem for anyone who reads this blog, frankly), then you wouldn’t have the slightest inkling what in the Samuel Langhorne Hell was going on in this movie. In that sense it wasn’t a straightforward adaptation of the story at all, but more like a visual poem exploring its themes. I thought it was beautifully done and very effective, with some really eerie shots, but those with less esoteric proclivities may find it a tad pretentious, and that’s okay. I really dug it, though, and was surprised how fabulous it looked for being nearly a century old. Check it out, if you’re so inclined, and until next time, keep it creepy, my friends. Goddess out.

A Sword Never Runs Out of Bullets: The Goddess Reviews “The Sky Has Fallen”

25 Jun 201519 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

Greetings, minions! Today I’m doing something a little different on this humble blog: I’m actually reviewing a movie that came out in the 21st century! And no, before you ask, I haven’t been abducted by extraterrestrials and replaced with a replicant, so don’t worry your pretty little heads about that, carbon-based life forms. Hu-mans, I mean. Wait, did I get that right? *checks with mothership*

Anyway, what happened was that writer/director Doug Roos contacted me on my Facebook author page and very nicely asked me to review his indie horror film, The Sky Has Fallen, and gave me the super secret hookup for the screener. If you would like to see it yourself, you can buy it on Amazon right here, but obviously you’re gonna have to pay, because you’re not as cool as me. So since I know what a bitch it is out there for independent artists, and how hard it is to get anyone to pay attention to what you create, let alone write at length about it, I was happy to oblige.

Roos raised the money for The Sky Has Fallen on Kickstarter, and in his pitch he played up the fact that the film was going to be 100% practical effects, which is rad and hopefully indicative of a larger trend, because I’m frankly kinda sick of looking at copious amounts of CGI and would love a return to more traditional special effects (as evidenced by my orgasmic review of Mad Max: Fury Road). The film was actually released in 2009, and went on to win several awards, including Best Feature at both the Indie Gathering Film Festival and the Freak Show Horror Film Festival.

In the interest of trying not to post spoilers, I will just give a very basic overview of the film. It’s nominally a zombie movie, I guess, though the zombies are not your run-of-the-mill undead, but rather people who succumbed to a mysterious fast-acting virus—which wiped out most of humanity—and subsequently fell under the mind control of a group of equally mysterious black-robed figures and their faceless, white-robed leader. These shadowy figures also seem to experiment on and eat their victims for some unknown purpose. This is an interesting premise, and I actually wish it had been explored in more depth; I’m usually all for subtlety and not over-explaining things in your horror movie, but in this case I wanted to know who these figures were (aliens?), if they were the ones responsible for the killer virus, and what their endgame was with the mind-control and the experimentation and the flesh eating. Maybe these questions were answered obliquely during the course of the film, but I wasn’t astute enough to pick up on it.

The film is pretty much a one-location, two-character piece, following survivors Lance (Carey MacLaren) and Rachel (Laurel Kemper) as they traipse through the woods, periodically slash their way through groups of gore-faced shamblers, fall in love, and have nightmares, flashbacks and existential conversations as they quest to kill the white-robed leader, which they hope will bring an end to the horror. I admit this aspect of the film got a little repetitive, as it seemed as though the conversations the characters had were all of a similar nature, and the scenes of them fighting the zombies were pretty much interchangeable. I feel like it might have worked better as a short film, as some of its hour-and-twenty-minute runtime felt like filler. It actually seemed like it was structured more like an Asian horror film, with repeating patterns rather than a standard Western three-part plot arc.

That said, the faceless leader was pretty damn cool-looking, and the shadowy figures suitably creepy. The effects were also quite good, very Fulci-esque, and gorehounds should be happy with the buckets of blood, hacked limbs, severed heads, eye-gougings and oozing wounds on display. I would have liked to see more of the blades and bullets actually impacting flesh, though, as most of the kills consisted of a shot of Lance swinging his katana, swiftly followed by a shot of a bloody head or arm rolling on the ground. The editing overall, in fact, was a little strange and stylized, and there were a lot of close-ups where sometimes I wasn’t really sure what I was looking at.

The acting was decent for a low-budget indie, but I never really got the sense that these were real people dealing with a worldwide epidemic that had been going on for two months. They looked too clean, for one thing, and didn’t seem at all hardened by their experiences both during and following the apocalypse. I also thought the final revelation vis-a-vis Rachel’s identity was a little forced. The limitations of the budget are fairly obvious too, as the film’s single forest location gives no sense of scope to the cataclysm the characters are describing.

All in all, I didn’t love it, but keep in mind that other than “The Walking Dead,” which I adore, the last zombie things I really enjoyed were both horror comedies (Dead Snow and Zombieland, in case you wondered). I think in general the zombie genre is pretty burned out at this point, though The Sky Has Fallen did have a fairly original concept, and I understand that zombie films are probably the easiest horrors to make on a nothing budget. I’d be interested to see what Roos could do with more money, as long as he retained his obvious enthusiasm for the genre and for old-school gore effects.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends. Goddess out.

Audio of Our Appearance on Jim Harold’s Radio Show

24 Jun 201519 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

Remember a little while back, when I said that the GoH and I were on Jim Harold’s radio show talking about The Mammoth Mountain Poltergeist? Well, in case you missed it, here is the podcast that you may download and listen to at your leisure. We are on the second segment. Enjoy! Oh, and by the way, I still have that Patreon thing going, so if you’d like to contribute a few bucks and get some nice perks like free books and what not, click here and make your offerings unto the Goddess. Thank you, dears.

The Goddess’s Favorite Creepy Movie Scenes, or It’s Not Kidnapping, It’s Borrowing

22 Jun 201519 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

I’m ashamed to say I had never heard of the movie I’m featuring today, which is the phenomenal British film Séance on a Wet Afternoon. It was recommended to me by a friend on Facebook, and over the weekend I sat down and spent a chilling two hours with it, marveling at its atmospheric mood and incredible psychological depth. It’s not a horror movie per se, but it is an intensely disturbing, absorbing thriller that garnered gobs and gobs of accolades when it came out back in 1964, including a Best Actress Oscar nomination for lead Kim Stanley. She lost to Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins, which is a terrible shame, though not all that surprising, frankly. Don’t get me wrong, I love Julie Andrews, but I definitely think Kim Stanley got robbed in this case. Her portrayal of a mentally unstable spirit medium was so nuanced and eerie that I found myself completely enthralled by the way her character came across as so sweet and harmless on the surface, while a manipulative, dark insanity lurked just beneath. Incidentally, if you’d like to watch for yourself, here you go, and if you’d like to read further, be warned that there will be spoilers:

The plot basically details a completely batshit scheme that working-class medium Myra Savage concocts to get attention and notoriety for her supposed psychic abilities. The film remains ambiguous about whether her abilities are real, but she clearly believes that they are, and that her stillborn son Arthur is acting as her spirit guide at the weekly séances she holds in their home. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know how much I love this type of ambiguity in films, and it’s especially good here; while we become unshakably certain over the course of the film that Myra is quite insane, we’re never entirely sure whether her mediumship is a cause or an effect of her insanity.

Using her cowed, milquetoast husband Billy (played by Richard Attenborough) to do her dirty work, Myra kidnaps (or “borrows,” as she insists on calling it) the daughter of a very wealthy, connected couple and ransoms the child for £25,000. Initially, Myra and Billy don’t plan to hurt the child or even keep the ransom money; their intentions are far more convoluted and insidious than that, and it’s implied that they’ve been refining the details for years. In a nutshell, they plan to keep the child and the ransom money hidden until Myra has made contact with the child’s parents and the police, whereupon she will claim that she has received messages from beyond that tell her where the child and the money can be found. She is sure that this will make a name for her throughout the land, and she hopes the news of her success will lead to fame and riches down the line.

As should be obvious from the type of film this is, the plan ultimately doesn’t go the way it was supposed to, and slowly sprouts ever more disturbing tendrils as Myra’s fragile hold on sanity begins to crumble away. Because the film doesn’t make clear from the beginning what the specifics of Myra’s plan are, and doesn’t explicitly lay out how she begins to subtly change the details as the story progresses, it’s a rather gripping watch; the tension keeps escalating as the viewer wonders what exactly the endgame is, and what exactly will go wrong.

The creepiest thing about this film, I thought, was the interplay between Myra and Billy, and the unspoken dynamic between them that made the presumably decent but weak-willed Billy go along with his wife’s obviously delusional ideas without too much complaint. Myra does not browbeat Billy into doing her will; she does not threaten him. Their relationship is such that she does not need to; she is able to convince him through the sheer force of her seemingly reasonable wheedling, and her slow escalation of requests that ultimately leave Billy in the same position as that fabled frog in boiling water. He obviously loves her dearly, and because he does, he has accepted that she sees him as nothing more than a tool to facilitate her own desires. In this way, Billy is quite a tragic character, subsuming his own identity and moral compass in deference to hers. At one point Myra tells him that the kidnapping of the child is simply a means to an end for them; no one is going to be hurt, she points out, and they won’t even be keeping the parents’ money, so what harm is there? “You agree with the end, don’t you?” she asks him in her soft, sweet voice, and when he assents, she follows with the seemingly logical conclusion, “Well, then you must agree with the means.” The great thing about this is that from their interactions, the viewer can really feel the weight of the years of their marriage behind them, of how her manipulation of Billy and his passive acceptance of it are simply par for the course. It is only at the very end of the film, when Myra has taken things one step too far, that Billy finally nuts up and blows the whistle on her, at which point she has lost her marbles to such a degree that she is no longer able to protest.

The scenes with Myra interacting with the kidnapped child are also pretty unsettling, as it’s clear that Myra views the girl in the exact same way she views Billy: As a thing that will get her the results she wants. She is never cruel to the child at all, but she is chillingly indifferent and detached, both when she speaks to her and when she speaks about her. That’s the great strength of Kim Stanley’s performance; the viewer is drawn in by her seemingly demure, motherly exterior and only slowly starts to realize that Myra is a sociopathic monster. It’s a fantastic study in the banality of evil.

Aside from the stellar characterization and almost unbearable suspense, the film also looks gorgeous, with lovely, atmospheric shots of candlelit faces around a séance table, or spooky houses reflected in puddles of rainwater. As I said before, it’s not strictly a horror film, but its look and subject matter definitely put it in the same league with the great ghost stories and thrillers of the period, and I would recommend it for any fans of either genre; it’s just a shame it’s not better known.

Stay tuned for more good stuff later in the week, and until next time, keep it creepy, my friends. Goddess out.

Scary Silents: “The Monster”

19 Jun 201519 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

So…I thought it was about time to do another Scary Silents, but because I’m under pretty much the same time constraints as before, I had to pick another short one. Luckily there are a lot of great short horror silents floating around on YouTube, many of them directed by the groundbreaking Georges Méliès, who was responsible for the well-known film A Trip To The Moon, as well as what’s considered the first-ever horror movie, The Haunted Castle from 1896 (which I wrote about here). He’s also the director behind today’s entry, a two-minute-seven-second movie from 1903 called Le Monstre (The Monster, duh), so let’s get right to it! Here’s the link:

We open on a shot of exotic Egypt, or at least a painted backdrop thereof. You know, sand, pyramids, temples, the whole deal. In the foreground is the Sphinx, bearing a hilariously eye-rolling facial expression like he just can’t deal with this shit anymore. A man and woman enter stage right. They’re both wearing long robes, and the guy looks like a sheik and has a huge fuck-off beard. He’s gesturing to the woman as if to say AND ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS IF THE PRICE IS RIGHT, and then he bows to her and she sits on a convenient stack of boxes nearby while he waves his arms grandly, all JUST SIT RIGHT THERE LITTLE LADY, I’M ABOUT TO BLOW YOUR MIND.

He drags a coffin into the center of the frame, because apparently he’s the kind of guy who just has coffins lying about the place. The woman is all OH MY, and then the sheik opens the coffin and pulls out a skeleton. BEHOLD THE BONES OF MINE ENEMIES, I imagine him saying, glancing over at his lady to see whether she’s impressed. She just seems more confused than anything, and who can blame her? Is this a first date? Were they originally just supposed to go to Starbucks and get to know each other? Is the sheik a serial killer she met on Craigslist? Has she made a terrible mistake?

The sheik gingerly lays the skeleton on the ground and drags the coffin back to where it came from. Then he’s all CHECK THIS SHIT OUT and starts waving his arms again. The skeleton has become animated! It starts to rise up into the air! The woman is like OH HELL NO and jumps up from her boxes with her hands over her mouth. After a moment she reconsiders, because I guess she just wants to give this blind date one last chance, even though things are starting to get weird, what with all the necromancy and what not. She sits down again. Then the sheik sits the skeleton on another stack of boxes, and hilarity ensues as the skeleton keeps floating up from the seat and the sheik has to keep shoving him back down. YOU SIT YOUR BONY ASS RIGHT DOWN, MISTER.

Then the sheik brings over some foofy white fabric and places some of it primly in the skeleton’s lap like the skelly is the latest bridezilla on Say Yes to the Dress, and then he puts some around the shoulders and on the skull like a veil. And then HEY PRESTO, the skeleton spontaneously fleshes out into a mummy-looking person with a wedding dress type getup on. Marry Me Mummy stands up at the sheik’s command and then begins to dance around in the spazziest way possible. The sheik is waving his arms again like he’s controlling the mummy’s movements, and then there’s a cool shot where it looks like the mummy is sinking into the ground like the Wicked Witch of the West, but then comes sprouting back out of the sand before it sinks in all the way. Then it floats up into the air a bit and makes like your standard mysterious hand gestures and what not. Then just the neck gets really long and the head dances around, and this actually looks pretty freaky, so good job there. Then the mummy normalizes again and does more of that crazy-ass dancing. The sheik grabs the mummy’s arm and drags it toward the woman, who has been watching this whole situation with astonishment and wonder. The sheik’s all COOL, YEAH? and the woman is like NOOOOO, GET IT AWAAAAAAYYYY and the sheik’s all AW MAN, I THOUGHT YOU’D LOVE THAT, WAIT A SECOND, THERE’S MORE and then he brings another length of white fabric and enshrouds the mummy in it. And then he takes this fabric away and VOILA! There’s another hot Egyptian princess under there! Why the sheik thought his first lady friend would be happy about this development is anyone’s guess, but the lady friend kinda rolls her eyes, probably thinking, OH, I SEE, I’M NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU ANYMORE AND YOU’D BETTER NOT REQUEST THAT THREESOME YOU WANTED AND ALSO SHE HAS A DOUBLE CHIN AND CANKLES, SO FUCK YOU AND YOUR SHEIKY PERVERSIONS, JACK. But then the lady bows and crosses herself (in ancient Egypt? Okay) and kisses the mummy lady’s hand, and I realize that the lady isn’t a lady at all, but a dude! Hey, cut me some slack, everyone’s wearing voluminous robes and long headpieces, so I can’t tell which gender is which. So I guess the whole point of this is that the lady-dude asked the sheik fella to bring his girlfriend back from the dead, which I would have known if I had checked the Wikipedia page before writing this. Also, the sheik is a dervish. So there’s that.

So then the dervish wraps the hot girlfriend in the shroud again and picks her up, and then he’s all HERE, CATCH to the lady-dude, and lady-dude is all I GOT HER, I GOT HER and grabs for her feet, but when he grabs the fabric the girlfriend is gone and just a skeleton falls out! The dervish is all HAHA, SUCKER and takes off with the fabric while the lady-dude is like OMG I JUST PAID THAT GUY SEVENTY CAMELS AND A MAGIC LAMP AND HE FUCKED ME, and then he runs off stage left after the absconding holy man. Dervishes are dicks, is the lesson there. And that’s the end.

Please stay tuned for more fun, same bat time, same bat blog. I’m hoping to get a couple movies watched this weekend to post about next week (Seance on a Wet Afternoon from 1964 and a new indie film called The Sky Has Fallen, which I was sent with a request to review it), so keep reading, and until next time, keep it creepy, my friends. Goddess out.

I’m Not Saying It’s Demons…Five Things That Happen on Pretty Much Every Episode of “A Haunting”

15 Jun 201519 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

The Goddess, as I may have mentioned before, is a hardline skeptic down to the very depths of her shriveled black core. But wait, I may hear the peanut gallery insisting. Didn’t you just write a book called The Mammoth Mountain Poltergeist, which you maintain is a true story? And aren’t you at this very moment working on a new book with parapsychologist Steve Mera about yet another true poltergeist account? Yes and yes, and also, don’t question me, mortal. While I’m willing to entertain the scientific possibility that there’s some weird shit the human brain is capable of that may account for so-called “poltergeist” infestations, and while I absolutely believe that the GoH’s and Steve Mera’s accounts of their experiences are 100% genuine, I have to say that in the vast, vast majority of cases of purported hauntings and poltergeist attacks, I firmly believe that the witnesses were probably mistaken, or misattributing natural phenomena to paranormal shenanigans, or straight out making the whole thing up for attention.

All that said, I love me some paranormal TV shows, if only for the sometimes creepy but usually unintentionally hilarious entertainment they provide. The GoH is also a big fan, and in fact, for his birthday a couple years ago, I bought him a box set of the first four seasons of “A Haunting,” and he has watched those discs so many times that I think we can both recite most of the episodes from memory. The newer shows aren’t quite as fun as the older ones, as it seems like the producers are constantly trying to top themselves with crazier and crazier shit until any semblance of believability has flown out the window, but we still find them fairly enjoyable to watch and dissect.

When you’ve seen the episodes as many times as we have, though, you start to notice definite patterns and formulas to the stories they choose to re-enact. Not all of the episodes adhere to the formula strictly; there are a couple of wild cards in the lineup, but I can safely say that roughly ninety-five percent of “A Haunting” episodes feature one or more of the following tropes:

1. The Women and/or Children in the Family Start to See Weird Shit First, and the Husband Doesn’t Believe Them Until He Either Sees It Himself or is Possessed by a Demon

This is probably the most common attribute of the stories by a significant margin. In a great majority of episodes, the husband/boyfriend works nights (who knew there were so many dudes working the night shift?) or is otherwise not in the house very much to witness the phenomena. I’m not sure why so many of the families featured on the show adhere to the traditional “man works while woman stays home” structure, since I know so few families in real life who can still afford to have one spouse not in the workforce, but maybe ghosts and poltergeists are more likely to strike stay-at-home moms for some reason known only to them (they’re just in it for the play-dates, man). Or perhaps the show producers like to finagle the stories somewhat to make them “scarier” by having the ghostly shit happen to the more “vulnerable” members of the family first. I could probably write a whole book on the cultural significance of this, and what it implies about the producers’ perception of their intended audience, but I’ll leave that for another time.

Here’s what almost always happens: The family moves into a cool old house (and it’s almost always old and in need of renovation; I guess there isn’t really anything scary about amorphous demon-shadows flitting through a modern high-rise apartment). The wife and children begin to feel uncomfortable in the place right away, and sometimes hear footsteps or voices, or notice that things are moving around on their own. Of course they tell the big manly man about their experiences, but the manly man is usually dismissive, because bitches be crazy, obviously. At one point the wife and children will beg to move out, but the manly man will pooh-pooh this idea—because he is rational and practical, dontcha know—and insist that the family’s finances are far more important than the wife and children’s safety or comfort. The wife and kids are stressed out, both by the bizarro shit happening to them and by the lack of sympathy displayed by the manly man.

Well, we have silly lady brains incapable of perceiving reality effectively, so that eerie chanting we're hearing up there must just be the squirrels in the rafters.

Well, we have silly lady brains incapable of perceiving reality effectively, so that eerie chanting we’re hearing up there must just be squirrels in the rafters.

But then, about halfway through the episode, manly man will get thrown out of bed by a ghostly whatsis or otherwise have something inexplicable and dramatic happen to him that finally makes him see the light, at which point I always turn to the GoH and say, “THEY NEVER LISTEN TO THE WOMEN. YOU ALWAYS LISTEN TO THE WOMEN IN HORROR STORIES.” I think the occurrence of this that pissed me off the most happened in an older episode whose title I can’t recall (because the titles rarely correlate closely with the subject matter; see point 4). The wife, home alone of course, begins to hear what sounds like someone walking around up in the attic. She calls her husband at work and tells him, and he brushes it off, telling her it’s her imagination. Now, at this point she’s not even saying that there are ghosts up there, yo. She just hears what she thinks is a person, probably a murderer, walking around in their house. AND THE HUSBAND DOESN’T WANT TO COME HOME TO HELP HER. Imma tell you something for free: If I was home by myself and heard somebody WALKING AROUND IN MY ATTIC, you can bet your diamond-encrusted Ouija board that the GoH would be home as fast as his little motorcycle would carry him, and before you could blink he would be pounding up those stairs with loaded gun in hand, demons or no. Don’t hang with dudes who evidently don’t care if you get sliced up by an attic psycho, ladies. Y’all deserve better than that.

A demonic hellbeast emerging from the toilet, you say? Good God, woman, can’t a man nap in peace???

There is also a variation on this theme in which manly man slowly starts to become possessed by the entity in the house, often without realizing it. This variation appears in the GoH’s favorite episode, “The Haunting of Summerwind,” in which hubby Arnold begins to go batshit, playing an old organ at all hours of the day and night, losing his job and all his money, and turning into a general garbage person who shrieks at his family for perceived slights and kills their pet raccoon purely out of spite (and you’d better believe that a crazily-screeched “WHERE’S THAT RACCOON?!?!” has become a common joke in the Hellfire household; it works in a surprising number of circumstances). There was also another episode where the manly man was evidently overtaken by a particularly assholic spirit and then tried to kill his wife with an ax. So that’s nice.

And I’m right here, by the way. Hi.

2. Even if the Main Spirit in the House is Benign, There Will Always Be Another Evil One Lurking in There Somewhere

Obviously, because this show is supposed to be scary, a sweet little helpful ghost who causes no distress and simply whooshes through the halls being all translucent and adorable just ain’t gonna cut it. There have been several episodes that featured a sad little kid ghost (“Sallie’s House” is probably the most obvious example), but you can bet that where sad little kid ghosts appear, evil murderer ghosts are never far behind.

Don’t mind me, I’m just a harmless little spectral girl, minding her own business and not at all waiting to reveal myself as a dark minion who will claw off your face. Nothing to see here, la la la.

Well, now, that’s just rude. (Unless that says “Pie Now,” in which case, gimme.)

In almost all cases, the mean ghost is the one who killed the kid ghost and is holding the kid ghost hostage in the human realm, presumably because they enjoyed being a dick so much in real life that they thought their dickishness should continue indefinitely into the afterlife. Alternately, the kid ghost is not a kid at all, but is rather a demon from hell who cleverly disguises itself as a kid to worm its way into the family all innocent-like. Often, the demon will get to the children first using this strategy, as he pretends to be an imaginary friend who slowly reveals himself to be evil incarnate. My very favorite example of this was in the aptly-named “Demon Child,” which featured a kid named Cody and his imaginary buddy named “Man” (real creative, there, demon). Man would make Cody behave like a total bratling, throwing tantrums and peeing in his closet (so, just like a regular six-year-old boy then). Just like the raccoon thing, Man has become a go-to joke in our house, and we will often invoke him as a justification for our own terrible behavior, like so:

Me: “Did you use the last of the Almond Joy coffee creamer?!?!”

GoH: “MAN SAID I COULD!!!”

Use it yourself; it’s fun!

Man said I could make you sit through a 12-hour marathon of The Teletubbies, mom.

Man said I could force you to sit through a 12-hour marathon of The Teletubbies, mom. Deal with it.

3. A Priest Will Be Called In to Deal with the Problem, and Will End Up Making It Worse, After Which a Magic Native American Will Recommend Smudging the House with Sage

If I’ve learned one thing from watching “A Haunting,” it’s that when dealing with paranormal chicanery, you should never, ever, ever get the church involved (not that I would anyway, because I’m an atheist, but you know what I’m saying). I admit that this trope has faded on the newer episodes, because I’m pretty sure that the production company that bought the show in 2012 has a religious agenda, but it’s a fairly common plot device on the older shows. The family, at the end of their tether due to the entity-based zaniness, will call in a priest when they have exhausted all of their other ideas. The priest will arrive, looking all pimpin’ like they do, and either perform a half-assed blessing and/or flee from the house in terror after seeing a crucifix catch fire or some shit. Generally, the phenomena will cease for a few days after the priest’s visit, just so the show doesn’t make men of the cloth appear totally useless. But because you’ve seen this show before and because there’s still fifteen minutes of runtime remaining, you just know that the clever demon has simply lulled the family into a false sense of security before unleashing even more supernatural fuckery. You think some old codger in a dress can just come in there and sprinkle some holy water about the place and make EVIL disappear? You best think again, viewer. All the priest did was piss the demon off, and he will now rain even more infernal vengeance upon your cowering ass as punishment for your feeble attempts to dislodge him from your domicile.

I joined the priesthood to avoid work, not waste time dealing with your spiritual bullshit.

Usually, after the church has failed miserably (YOU HAD ONE JOB, HOLY MAN), someone in the family will call up a flaky psychic chick or a medicine man they happen to know, because everyone on this show happens to know one. Said mystical and new-agey personage will always recommend “smudging” the house with sage, which in practice entails lighting a big ol’ bundle of the stuff and waving it around all the rooms in a manner that frankly seems even less effective than the cross-and-holy-water combo, but what the hell do I know. Evidently, in much the way that mosquitoes are repelled by citronella candles, evil entities cannot abide the smell of sage, and will abscond through the windows at the first subtle whiff of the stuff, leaving to haunt the neighbors’ house or possess some hapless little kid who happened to be riding his Big Wheel down the sidewalk out front. But whatevs, as long as they’re out of YOUR hair, amirite? This usually works as a last resort, but on a few episodes the sage was just as worthless as the other religious voodoo, and the family is forced to extricate themselves from their mortgage or rental agreement in the most ridiculous way possible.

Pictured: the kryptonite of the spirit world.

4. The Title of the Episode Will Have Little to Nothing to Do with the Episode’s Content, Will Just Be Generic and Applicable to Pretty Much Any Other Episode

As many times as I’ve seen these episodes, I STILL have a hard time remembering which title corresponds to which episode, for this very reason. While a handful of shows are simply titled according to the locations where they happened (“A Haunting in Florida,” “The Wheatsheaf Horror,” “Nightmare in Bridgeport”), the rest of the shows have titles that wouldn’t seem out of place on one of those cheapie, indistinguishable, direct-to-DVD horror flicks you find yourself indifferently scrolling through on Netflix at 3am. “Echoes from the Grave” could refer to pretty much any story featured in the series’ run, as could “House of the Dead,” “Darkness Follows,” “Hidden Terror,” “The Presence,” “Stalked by Evil,” or my personal favorite, “The Diabolical,” a title made even more delightful by the fact that whenever some demon-based shit begins to happen on any episode, the GoH will turn to me, raise one eyebrow, and go, “I’m gonna have to say it. This shit is getting [dramatic pause and switch to creepy whisper] diabolical.” Trust me, it never gets old.

The Terror Echoes of the Past That Haunted the House of Nightmare Horrors from the Darkest Pits of Hell, next on Destination America.

5. At Some Point, a Woman Will Be Seen Doing a Load of Laundry, and Also Will Probably Find a Pentagram Under a Carpet Somewhere

Seriously, WHAT is with women always doing laundry on this show? Does someone on the production team have a Maytag fetish? It’s mind-boggling, and frankly a little, yes, diabolical. Look, I understand laundry has to be done quite often, depending on the size of the family portrayed, and I understand that since most of the women on the show are “housewives” (ugh, the 1950s called) they will end up doing the bulk of the laundry because their husbands are too busy out earning that almighty paycheck or banging hookers or scoring blow or whatever it is that they do when they’re not in the house helping out their harried and haunted spouses. I get that. I also get that when they film the re-enactments, they want to show the actress doing something productive in the house rather than just sitting around on the couch watching reruns of “River Monsters” and stuffing cheese curls into her maw (which is usually what I’m doing, if I’m being perfectly honest). But dammit, there are other things she could be doing, show writers. Aren’t there dishes to be washed? Catboxes to be emptied? Baseboards to be scrubbed? Couldn’t she be, I dunno, replacing the power steering fluid in her SUV in the garage? Learning Swahili? Synthesizing DNA? Practicing her trapeze act? Building a scale model of the Taj Mahal out of mashed potatoes? House-training her tame bonobo? ANYTHING other than gathering up her husband and children’s filthy underthings and carrying them about the house in a little plastic basket? Evidently not. For the women of “A Haunting,” it’s just one vast, endless wasteland of soiled Tuffskins and fabric softener, topped off by the occasional ass-pinch from a ghost in the eerie, lonely laundry room, which is always, ALWAYS in the dimly-lit basement (and I live in Florida, where basements are very thin on the ground, so for all I know laundry rooms are always in the basement in other parts of the country and that part of the show is entirely accurate).

Is it bad that I’m kinda hoping for a haunting to liven up this drudgery?

Use the spray starch next time, this gown is chafing like a motherfucker.

Speaking of basements, more often than not, there’ll be a ratty old carpet down there that will inevitably be kicked aside one joyless, laundry-filled day to reveal a sloppily-drawn pentagram in red paint that looks suspiciously like bloooooooood, you guys. PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TOYING WITH SATANISM IN THIS BASEMENT, AND SHIT’S ABOUT TO GET REAL. Alternately, the pentagram will appear under some peeling wallpaper or in a hidden room at the back of a closet, but the upshot is always the same: The credulous geezers who are watching the show and taking it seriously still remember the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and will proceed to pee their pants in terror at how some irresponsible goth kid who used to live there went and LET THE DEVIL IN. And then the poor lady on the show will have to do another load of urine-soaked laundry. Poor wives just can’t catch a break, folks.

Hmmm, what could this strange symbol portend? Could it be…SATAN???

ETA: After I talked to the GoH about this blog post, he reminded me of a couple of other recurring amusements in these episodes that I had forgotten all about! For example, the music on the soundtrack, he points out, will always match the person on screen in the most obvious way imaginable. Asian dude? Plinking “Chinese” music. Native American? Tribal drums and chanting. Priest? Something that sounds like Enigma. Likewise, a successful exorcism of the entity will always be accompanied by a heavenly light and the sound of an angel choir, especially in the newer episodes. It’s pretty egregious and funny; watch for yourself! Also, he notes, whenever the family in the re-enactment has a teenage daughter, the cameraman will linger juuuuuust a little too long on her pert teenage booty, even if her character is supposed to be fourteen years old. Eeeewwwww.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my fanciful ramblings, and remember, the book I co-authored with the GoH, The Mammoth Mountain Poltergeist, is available in print and ebook formats, and is guaranteed 100% priest, raccoon, and demon free. Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends. Goddess out.

God love the Warrens.

Good Night, Sweet Prince

12 Jun 201519 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / 1 Comment

Here We Are on “Behind the Paranormal!”

11 Jun 201519 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

We were the guests on the radio show Behind the Paranormal this past Monday, talking about The Mammoth Mountain Poltergeist! If you want to listen, and I know you do, you can download the MP3 right here. Danke!