Just a quick shout out on one of my favorite poems. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe was first published with his name attributed to it on this day in 1845. Very haunting and very Gothic. Anyway, if you’d like to read it, go here. If reading isn’t your thing, you can find a recording on Librivox here. If you want to see a video of Vincent Price reading The Raven, go down to the bottom of the wikipedia page on the poem and you’ll find it under external links/video. He does a dramatic reading of the poem, not literal, but hey it’s Vincent Price! And if you want to see the best adaptation of The Raven ever, go here for The Simpson’s Halloween special version. So, if you like really depressing, gothic poems, enjoy!!
A guest post by Red Rocker!
Do you like ghost stories?
The very first ghost story I ever read was The Whistling Room by William Hope Hodgson. It’s about a room where a very bad thing happened, a long time ago. Perhaps because it was the first ghost story I’d ever read, haunted house stories have been my favorites ever since. All I need to see is mention of a cold spot without a corresponding draft, a shadow standing in the window of a deserted room, a door which will not stay shut – or open – and I’m hooked. Let the haunting begin.
I have forgotten most of the haunted house stories I’ve read – they may raise goosebumps at the moment, but there is nothing in them that returns to make me uneasy the day after. A few images do stay with me: I’ve never forgotten the long black hairs caught up in the coat buttons of Maupassant’s protagonist in A Ghost. I’ve always wondered about who was knocking on the walls in Shirley Jackson’s Hill House: old Miss Crain? Eleanor’s mother? Something not dead because it was never alive? And of course every time I stay in a hotel room I check the picture frames to make sure they are exactly plumb. Curse you Stephen King and room 1408. [click to continue…]
According to this story, Stephen King is going to try his hand at comic books. He’s contributed five issues to a new comic called American Vampire, which reimagines the vampire in an American setting. Here’s a brief blurb from the article on what they’re planning to do with the story:
“The series twists the well-trod vampire legend by allowing the creatures to evolve into a distinctly American creature and will follow the adventures of Skinner Sweet, a sociopathic outlaw in the Wild West who becomes the first American vampire. Unlike European vamps, Skinner is powered by the sun and, true to his native environment, has rattlesnake fangs. Each cycle, consisting of five individual comic issues, will take place in a different period of time in American history, tracing Skinner’s descendants, with Skinner himself as a recurring character.”
Thoughts?
Discovery Channel News had a nice, short commentary from Katherine Ramsland, the author of The Science of Vampires. It’s only about 2 and a half minutes long. Lots of still images, some from Nosferatu. So, if you don’t want to watch the Nosferatu movie, you can at least see how they imagined Count Orlok. It’s a pretty interesting commentary and speaks to some of what we’ve recently discussed on vampires. I invite you to check it out and share your thoughts.
Red Rocker on 
Perelandra on 
Tom on 
Joivre on 
Arabella Figg on 
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