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Tag Archives: Horror Story

Impressionism and Symbolism in Weird Fiction

For those writers and bloggers who have steadfastly followed the last two stories I’ve posted, I would like to say thank you for reading them. After I published my collection of short stories in 2010 I decided to take some time away from writing and figure out a new direction. Finally, I decided to write a novella that was a Lovecraftian, Cthulhu Mythos story – The Scourge of Wetumpka. That took some time to write but turned out quite well. Coming off of that I began writing Psychological Horror short stories. When I use the term Psychological, I am using it in the true sense of the term as having to do with Psychology. I have a Master’s in Psychology and I really enjoy Psychological thrillers with horror or dark fantasy overtones. The first couple of stories were “Alone” and “Shockley House”. I was very pleased with “Shockley House” but wound up re-writing “Alone” in order to make it deliver the right effect. After those two stories, I began to get interested in the use of Symbolism and the techniques used in Impressionism. The last two stories, “The Land of Nod” and “The Murklor”, explore using those techniques in writing weird tales. What makes them really work on a blog is that each day (or every couple of days) a new glimpse or vignette is added to the overall impression of the piece. In “The Land of Nod” I tried to do that by adding more bits of symbolism to the canvass of the story. In “The Murklor”, I tried to do that by adding new vantage points – usually in the form of different writing techniques. Overall, I’m really liking this new direction of Impressionistic Weird Fiction. It’s fun and offers so much freedom.

BTW, I can’t take credit for inventing it. Here’s a really good interview about what I’m trying to achieve in my writing:

The Insomniac Propagandist

One final note – the ciphers in the story “The Murklor” are very much real. They aren’t just thrown together to make the story weirder than it already is. Each one was methodically designed and does have a real solution.

Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling

Here is a good article about what this blog is all about!

Storytelling

 

Horror Poetry #6

The Will-O’-The-Wisp

Lying listless on a lonely, loam lake shore

Framed by fog and the bitter, brine bog air

Curse the cruel fangs of fate that flung me here

My body beaten down by the black brood of despair

T’would take a thousand years to tell the tale

Of the madness, misery, and mischievous calamity

And I pray not ponder upon my past hell

Lest I beat my brain from my brow in insanity

Then lo, I spy through the gloom a green, glowing globe

Floating, flying, bouncing, and bobbing right at me

Too weak to worry with rising to run

I anxiously await its arrival and abhor the agony

What would it want with a wretch with no will?

Then it howled by my head and halted and hovered

And an enigmatic energy possessed my person

Slowly sinking; subsumed, consumed and now covered

Horror Poetry #3

Ode to the Moon

Come join us, won’t you?

Take part

With festive heart

With dancing feet

To a restless beat

Sing

An ode to the Moon

A plump, pudgy, corpulent Moon

The kind that makes lovers swoon

Just right for a honeymoon

Makes ocean tides swell

Drives wolves to yell

The kind that silhouettes a witch

Or makes a lycanthrope twitch

Oh fullest Moon

So golden clad

So voluminous

So luminous

Yet daytime hath forbad

So magisterial

So ethereal

To it magic cannot add

How is it that you drive

A sane man mad?

Horror Poetry #1

The Haunters of Autumn

 Oh how they cower in dark little places

Fear etches haunted looks on their faces

They scamper and scurry to avoid the light

Only come out to play under cover of night

Their eyes glow like candles flickering in wind

And the rustling of leaves is the sound of their skin

You cannot catch them for they’ve already fled

They cannot be killed for they’re already dead

You’ll hear them whisper from shadowy wood

As the Haunters of Autumn send chills through the blood

 

The airs of October carry their voices

Half-heard gigglings and other strange noises

A whisper behind you that drifts through the air

Tells you their presence is about you somewhere

What are these creatures that haunt the gloom

Mocking and stalking with portents of doom?

The woods are alive with their tittering taunts

You walk alone on one of your nightly jaunts

Hearing your shrieks over the darkening plane

As the Haunters of Autumn leave you cold and insane

Horror Author Tribute

This is artwork paying tribute to some of my favorite authors of horror:

The Wetumpka Cycle

Having put much thought (and research) into a new story arc that will be the backdrop to a new series of stories, I’ve just about finished the first story that will likely weigh in at some 6,000 – 7,000 words. I’ve dubbed this cycle of stories the Wetumpka Cycle for the name of the town and its history in Alabama. These stories are to be integrated into the Cthulhu Mythos and will draw on much of the creatures, deities, and arcane literature that many authors before me have contributed to the Mythos.

Of course I will be adding my own elements to everything. A few of the books I’ve decided to draw on are real books:  Tyson’s Necronomicon, the Nocturnicon, and The Book of Nod. There are various other real books that aren’t contemporary works that I’ve researched and will use. Mostly they are books on witchcraft, demonology, Hermeticism, and alchemy.

The plot of the larger arc that unfolds is based on some very real events in Alabama’s history. In Wetumpka, Alabama is the site of the state’s only confirmed impact crater. Matter of fact, I currently live inside of the caldera. The asteroid that caused it impacted the Earth many millions of years ago and was estimated to be as large as a football stadium. The result is that the current crater is about 5 miles in diameter. In the Mythos, this asteroid contained an alien metal that possessed sinister powers and was a conduit through which an alien, outside force could project its influence causing the psyches of the humans that would come to settle the area and come into contact with the metallic ore of the asteroid to change. The result usually being a gravitation towards madness, violence, evil, abuse, and various other dark behaviors.

The metal lay dormant for millions of years waiting to act on a sentience. The Native Americans were the first people to settle the area and they were the ones to discover the metal. Sensing the uniqueness of the metal, they revered it and incorporated it into their rituals. When Hernando de Soto came with his conquistadores through Alabama in the 1500’s they took the metal and fashioned it into a set of shields; but before they could leave the area the Indians rose up at the Battle of Mabilla and took back the shields. After that they were re-incorporated back into the rituals of the natives – thus becoming the object of the Brass Plate Dance in the Creek’s Green Corn Festival.

History lost them after white settlers arrived and the Creek War ended. Many legends as to their fate have circulated but the plates’ whereabouts remain a mystery. That is until it’s explained in the Wetumpka Cycle.