The Conjuring 2

Photo: the movie's poster, from t3.gstatic.com

My review of the first Conjuring movie is here.

I visited the house in the first Conjuring movie. You can read about that here. There are lots of creepy photos of gravestones and crypt doors, too.

This was a good scare of a movie, perhaps better than the first. I can't remember the last time I was actually spooked in a theater, but I exclaimed something out loud during one of the scenes. (I never talk during movies, and usually tar and feather those who do. And I never get jolted at them, either. I tend to figure them out pretty quick, too, like when I saw The Sixth Sense and knew right after he got shot that he was dead thereafter. I mean, the kid said he saw dead people, for God's sake.) James Wan, the director, is especially good, I noticed, at showing something you expect to be scared by, then not being scared by that thing (because nothing's there, but you're a veteran of these movies, so you expect there to be, but Wan knows that, so purposely doesn't put anything there), and then when the camera slowly pans back to where it had been, something jumps out at you. That's what happened when I said something out loud. The instant is when the little girl is watching television--and it's not when something was in the television, either. Just next to it.

The story starts at the home of the clairvoyants--or mediums, or whatever exactly it is they say they are. (Actually, it really starts in the Amityville Horror house. You know you've seen and read a lot about this stuff when you see just the outside of the house in the opening shot, and think, "Oh, it starts in Amityville, with Ronald DeFeo killing his family." I also remembered the house was owned by the Lutzes and that the book was written by Jay Anson. I really should go on Jeopardy one of these days. By the way, I also thought, "As you know, Amity means friendship," but of course that's another movie.) One of them keeps seeing this really spooky-looking nun with barracuda teeth and dirty smock--ironic, considering how Christian the two say they are. (In fact, they technically work for the Church in this movie.) This nun-demon is harassing one of them, and they agree to stop their investigations.

Until...

In Enfield, England, a really nasty old man of a ghost is haunting a woman and her two daughters and two sons. (The father abandoned them--all five of them! How come people like that are never the ones harassed?) This only happens after one of them messes with a handmade Ouija board, which I never recommend. Anyway, this old guy had died in their living room, in his favorite old recliner, which every old man has. (We called my father's black, held-together-by-thick-black-masking tape LAY-Z-BOY "The Knowledge Chair," for obvious reasons.) This old guy is in the habit of biting unsuspecting screaming people on their arms--though they find his retainer after the last one, and the biting stops. So he's harassing everyone, insisting the place is his--while others insist it's not anymore, because he's dead, and so will he please leave, and not let the door hit his arse on the way out?

He agrees to do that--without telling anyone--but then...Well, Houston, we have a problem.

So go see this one if you like this kind of thing. Like most decent scare flicks, this one won't make too much sense when you have a second afterwards to think about it, but it's a good scare while you're sitting there. I'd heard from a few reviews that the whole movie seemed a half hour too long. It didn't seem that way to me, and it didn't really drag, either, which is rare for this kind of thing.

One thing I really liked about it is that the movie doesn't pander to the audience. At the risk of sounding like a prude, there's no gratuitous violence, gore, or anything else. It has confidence in its ability to scare, and it doesn't assume the viewer's an idiot. There are the token nay-sayers (Franka Potente, from the first Jason Bourne film, and from Run, Lola, Run), and it's nice to see that they're smart as well, and not just token blowhards. In fact, Potente's character had a point: these things are often either fakes, or the person being possessed--usually an adolescent girl--has psychological or emotional damage and disabilities going on that have nothing to do with being possessed. (There's one on YouTube, a French girl from the 50s, that I play whenever I want to freak out my better half, who insists with vigor that I turn it off.) Anyway, these girls think they're possessed, so they're not faking, exactly, but the parents often know there's no actual possession going on, but they let the whole thing go on anyway because of a Munchhausen Syndrome, and...yeah, it's all a mess, and very hard to both prove and disprove. The girl in this movie looks and sounds like the one I'm talking about on YouTube, and I think some of The Exorcist is based on this girl as well.

I kept waiting for something else to happen, because the girl's behavior and voice mirrored the one I mention. When the slight twist happens, you may be a little let down like I was, as the movie comes full circle again, and if that was going to happen, why not just do so where they were, and not make these two have to travel across the Pond to get what they can get (and did get) just as well back home? Like I said, like most terror flicks, it's a house of cards if you think about it too much.

So don't do that. Go see it. You'll get your scare fix, and probably stronger than from the first one.

For more on the Enfield story, and for a fact vs. fiction article, go to http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/conjuring-2-enfield-poltergeist/

I'm most impressed by the tidbit at the bottom, which says that when the new family moved in, they almost as quickly moved out, staying for just a few months. This is unlike what the new families said of the Amityville house, and of the house mentioned in the first Conjuring, which I visited.

As a reminder, you can read about that here. There are a lot of pictures, including some creepy gravestones and crypt doors. My review of the first Conjuring movie is here.

A Visit to Lizzie Borden's House

Photo: Lizzie Borden's house--the murder house, not Maplecroft, where she later moved--at 92 Second Street, Fall River, MA as it looked in 1892.  From Lizzie Borden's Wikipedia page.
 

Photo: Lizzie Borden's actual books, in the Lizzie Borden house.  The 9th one from the left--the thick blue one, is titled When Ghost Meets Ghost.  This photo, and all the following photos, were taken by me in the Lizzie Borden house.  Please note: Out of respect for the proprietors of the Lizzie Borden House, I do not show any of the meatier (reads: gruesome, but better to draw in blog readers) pics that are available there (and on my phone's camera).  The address is 92 Second Street (GPS address is 230 Second Street) in Fall River, MA.  It's open from 11-3, seven days a week.  You can reserve a day and time as well.  Go to the official website: https://lizzie-borden.com/.  They have a cool thing going on over there, and I don't want to rain on their parade, so you'll have to take the tour (just $15 per person for 50 minutes) to see the pics I speak of here, and in the blog below.  Many of the pics you'll see in this entry are ones I took at the Borden House, but are also popular pics of this case, and are commonly found online.


Recently (on Lizzie's birthday, July 19th, as it turned out; 1 in 365 chance there) I went to Lizzie Borden's house, just half an hour away from my own house, just to have a look-see.  I'm planning to write a novel (one of many planned; if I had world enough, and time) about the murder and trial, told from the POV of the maid, who moved away from the house on that fateful day, and died in Montana.

The house is now a bed and breakfast, and it gives tours through the day.  The tour guide (who seemed honestly surprised that our tour took about an hour) through the house was the daughter of the guy who now owns the place.  She did a great job, and clearly likes what she's doing.  How many high school seniors can say that they work at a (possibly) real haunted house (though for the record I didn't get any creepy vibes), and that they talk to people about a famous murder that, at the time, was called "The Crime of the Century" over 100 years before O.J.?  Well, she can.  (And she said a ghost pulled her earlobe there when she was a kid, and that other guests report strange things, including Abby Borden's ghost saying nice, motherly things).  She was very knowledgeable about her subject matter (though she may have fudged a little about the maid's infamous last words--that weren't; I'll explain later, at the end of this blog entry), very friendly and energetic, and very interested in Fall River in general.  She has a career as an actress or guide, but she said she was going to college to be a biologist.

I highly recommend the tour.  You can just show up like I did, and (because they were running late) go right on the tour without any waiting.  It's only $15 a person, and you can take all the pics and all the notes you want.  No film, though, I think.  But you can ask.  The address is 92 Second Street (GPS address is 230 Second Street) in Fall River, MA.  It's open from 11-3, seven days a week.  You can reserve a day and time as well.  Go to the official website: https://lizzie-borden.com/.  They have a nifty catchphrase on the page: "Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum: Where Everyone Is Treated Like Family."  Well, I hope not!

Anyway, it's a well-maintained place with some of the real house stuff, though most of the things in there now were time-accurate pieces bought at auctions, etc.  (But the couch Mr. Borden was murdered on, the one you see in all the online pics, is the exact one that is still in the house.  If you look at the pics [too gruesome to put here], you'll see why--Who could get all that stuff out in 1892?)  I think the step-mother's bed is the same, but I could be wrong.  Unfortunately, the real things fell into neglect, as Lizzie was jailed for a long time after the murder, and the sister and maid moved away, and everything just kind of went to hell.  After the acquittal, they took whatever they wanted with them (Lizzie went to Maplecroft, up the street, which actually looks creepier than the Lizzie Borden house does today) and the rest went into storage.  What happened to all that 1892 stuff after that is anybody's guess.

The Lizzie Borden House was bought by people, and then again, and again...the current owner has really spiffed the place up for his business (the place and tour aren't as business-y as the website is), and the house itself is really well-cared for.  The tour guide was very honest about the things in the house--but as a writer, I really just needed to see the house, to stage what happened in there in my mind.  For example, how else would I have known that there aren't any hallways in the place at all?  One door opens into a room, and then another does the same, and so on.  No hallways with rooms off of them; no privacy at all, one would think.  And, as the informative and energetic guide pointed out, if you compare some of Lizzie's testimony with the layout of the house, you can see that she was lying.  For example, she said that she was in the dining room, ironing, and didn't hear the step-mother or her father being murdered.  But if you stand in the room she said she'd been in, you could see this would not be possible.  It's amazing how close everything is in the house.

So, if you're in the area, go see the Lizzie Borden House.  I also went to see Maplecroft, where she moved later.  (Just a few minutes away, the house is nothing to be named.  Only Newport mansions were named back then, and this place is a far cry from that, and even more so today.  As I said, it looks like it would be more haunted than the murder house does.  It's possible that she was putting on airs.)  I also went to see the cemetery where all of the Bordens are buried; that's just up the street in a huge cemetery on the peninsula.  The cemetery's main road has small white arrows pointing to the exact spot the Bordens are interred so that nobody gets lost and / or defaces any other gravestones--like people have at poor Mercy Brown's grave.

Blogs will follow about the murder house, Maplecroft, Fall River, and the cemetery.  Until then, a few pics:

This is a picture of the Borden house and surrounding homes as they would've been in 1892.  Today, only the Borden house is left.  It's a busy street now--as it was then--but there are newer homes, businesses, apartment houses, a cathedral.  I know it's 122 years later, but it's still shocking how much things change.

This is the room where Andrew Borden was killed.  The actual couch he was killed on is to the left in this pic.  Here it is, closer up:

And here's the bed beside which Abby Borden was killed.  The famous picture of her kneeling beside the bed was taken after her body had been moved for the picture.  Initially, she'd been trying to get under the bed, her arms were outstretched, and her skirt had ridden up.  The first doctor on the scene moved her body to a more "lady-like" position.

There are some very gruesome pics indeed I could have shown here, but out of respect for the proprietors of the Borden House, not to mention of the dead, I won't do so here.  You'll have to go to the Borden House (again, which I highly recommend) to see them; or, if you're interested in this stuff, you've probably already seen the more hideous and infamous pics online.  The one above is a popular pic.  But at the House you can see a pic of what Abby's head--and the huge thick puddle of blood--looked like.  The House has a picture of a camera taking a picture from the other side of the bed, facing the mirror / dresser you can see in this photo, to the upper left.  Reflected in the mirror is an 1892 camera taking the picture--and it is very bloody and gory.  If you're into this kind of thing, you've probably seen the online pic of Andrew Borden's devastated face and skull, as he'd lay on that aforementioned couch, his head on his folded coat, which he used as a pillow.  Very creepy, because it's taken from a short distance, and there are shadows, yet you can still see the damage.  There's another one at the Lizzie Borden House that I hadn't seen: the autopsy shot of him lying on an 1892 gurney at the Borden home, just hours after he died.  (A second autopsy was done later, after his funeral, at the Oak Grove Cemetery where he, his wives and his daughters are now buried.)  This is one of the most gruesome I've ever seen, which is saying something.  Creepiest thing is that, although the face is almost completely obliterated, you can see hair and ears that look perfectly normal.

To give you a sanitized feel for it all, here are their fake--but historically accurate--skulls.  His on the left, hers on the right.  (Their real skulls were infamously separated from their bodies and used as visual aids at the trial--and then put back with their bodies, in the wrong places!)  Notice the damage done on his skull on the side, as that would be the side facing up while he was asleep on the couch, facing out.  Her damage was done on the back and right side, as she'd been facing away at the time of the first blows, and Lizzie was right-handed.  Supposedly Abby then turned to the side, either in stunned surprise, or because she was folding something on the bed, and that's why much of the damage is there as well.

Well, that's it for now.  More of this morbid stuff to come, including paragraphs and pics of Lizzie's murder house and her later abode, at Maplecroft, as well as of the people involved and of their final resting place.

Oh, yeah, the maid.  So it's in the 1940s now, and Bridget Sullivan, the maid, lives in Montana.  As the story goes, she gets really sick with pneumonia and thinks she's dying.  She sends word to a friend to come see her before she dies because she has something very important to say.  (Why she couldn't just call this person is a mystery, since by the 40s phones were commonplace.)  Anyway, this friend travels to Montana, but by the time the friend gets there, Bridget has recovered and doesn't say anything about the murder.  Then she dies four or five years later, never having said anything about what she was going to say when she was sick.

This is, by the way, where my planned novel starts.  Flashbacks, then it bookends with her getting better--and then dying, never having said whatever it was she thought it had been really important to say.

Or...did she say something after all? 

American Horror Story: Murder House

Photo: 1120 Winchester Place, Los Angeles, CA.  This is the real house used in the series.  From the show's Wikipedia page

I decided to view Season One of American Horror Story after viewing Season Two and liking it so much.  Season One was also good, though not as much as Season Two.  The writers seemed to have written themselves out of the main characters, as the secondary ones take over here, and where they go is interesting, but since they're already dead, you care less about them as characters.

At first the very dysfunctional family of husband, wife and (suicidal) high school daughter move into this (very) haunted house.  Turns out, the house has many ghosts in it: a gay couple, murdered fewer than three years before the current occupants; a surgeon who can't pay his bills, and the wife who shot him, and then herself; one of his freelance abortion patients; and, most dangerously, a teenage psychopath who had killed many students in his school before he was shot in his bedroom by the police.  He's a very angry, or still-psychotic, ghost who later kills the gay couple (and does something really nasty to one of them with a fireplace poker), and later rapes the mother, a current occupant, who later dies giving birth to what the show insinuates is Satan's spawn.  Was the killer used by Satan, or was he evil to begin with?  Or both?  The viewer can decide, but the characters themselves conclude that he is just pure evil, and the Devil's spawn angle is downplayed, though never really done away with.  And there are many, many other ghosts I haven't written about here, some of whom have little, if anything, to do.

Therein lies the problem of the first season: the writing in the last six episodes or so meanders, and seems very unsure of itself as it does so.  The Black Dahlia is introduced without reason, more as an homage to the L.A. noir style itself, and maybe James Ellroy, who famously wrote about her, and who infamously said she may his mother, or that her killer may have been his father, or both, I forget.  Other homages include Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, in the sense that the movie's music is played in almost every episode.  Other movies in the Dracula, Frankenstein, and Southern Gothic modes, as well as lots of Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, and the like are paid homage as well.  Part of the joy of the series is catching and appreciating all of them.  You don't have to know them, though, to appreciate the series.

But back to the uneven writing.  What to do with the family?  Well, the writers didn't seem to know, either.  What to do with the many very unhappy ghosts?  In a nice twist, the family of ghosts ends up a much happier trio together than they ever did while they were alive.  Is the American family unit the "horror story" of the title?  It certainly seems that way, except the adults are so caught up in their own garbage that they don't even realize their daughter is dead.  (Though, to be fair, she doesn't know this, either, until she's told.)  The most wacky thing to me was that none of the ghosts seems to care too much that they're dead.  This is especially true of the father at the end, who is the only one left alive, and who seems to have the most to live for--his new child.  When he's killed by the ghost of his very young mistress (Kate Mara, older sister of Rooney Mara, from The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo), he seems mildly chagrined, at most.  The mother also doesn't seem to mind, though she knows she's without at least one of her newborns (she's told the first one died, but it didn't, and that's the one she ultimately ends up caring for); she also doesn't know her daughter's dead until her daughter visits her and says to let go of the pain, which the mother does.  (This seemed like too much of a condoning of suicide for me, which is how the daughter died, as well.)  Anyway, if the characters don't seem to take their lives very seriously, how can the viewer?

And that's the whole point at the end: the series creator's don't want you to feel sad for the family, and you don't, as they're clearly happier and better off than they had been.

How does it want you to feel about the Jessica Lange character, the devious and unsaintly and witchy neighbor who had lived in the house with her psychotic son, her wayward husband, her loose maid and her other two children, all of whom die before the very end?  Well, good and bad, in turns, though at the end she's gotten what she's asked for--a grandchild--but does she really want to take care of Satan's spawn?  I don't know, though I doubt it.  Jessica Lange does great work with a meandering role that makes her a victim and a killer.  You feel badly for her, because most of her siblings are dead and/or psychotic (and, in one case, both), but you also see her kill her husband, their maid, and almost the daughter next door.  In that last case, the daughter and her mother are victims of three psychotic people who want to kill them as others had been killed in the house.  Luckily, one of them eats the poisoned cupcake meant for the daughter, and...here's an example of the meandering.  Turns out, this entire series of events was unnecessary to the outcome of the whole thing.

So, at the end, this was like a good horror movie.  Riveting and sometimes creepy while watching it, but the second you think about the whole thing afterwards, it is very easy to see its many flaws.  But, if you haven't seen any of it yet, I do recommend it, especially if you're knowledgeable about the genres it pays homage to.

The Conjuring House

Photo: I took this pic of an open crypt door at a cemetery near The Conjuring House.

After watching The Conjuring (my movie review, here), I decided to take a trip to Burrillville, Rhode Island (about half an hour away) and see the house it's based on.  My intention was to just go for a nice drive with my dog and to get out of the house for awhile.  If I could inobtrusively get a glimpse of the house from the road, fine.  If not, I'll just drive by and see what there was to see.

I want to make it clear that I do not condone anyone going to the house and loitering around.  There's an old couple that lives in there now, and they have a right to their privacy.  Having said that, I won't be a hypocrite, and I'll admit that I took a few pictures from the street of the house's front door (that's all of the house you can really see; it's not at all like the one in the film) and of the nearby barn, which I thought looked creepier than the house.  I was hoping for a glimpse of the lake in the backyard; the house is in a management area, so there's a real possibility of such a thing.  But, alas, no.  Anyway, I do not condone or advise for anyone to do what I just said I did, even from the street, and I'll explain why.  But before I do, ask yourself: Do you want a crowd of people congregating in the street, gawking at you and your home, and taking pictures of your house and barn?  One of the women I met there even told someone she was going to go up to the door and knock on it, or ring the bell.

I advised her not to do so.  Not only is it loitering and trespassing, but, also, according to the true story, that's the same front door that the evil spirits banged on relentlessly.  This latter part worked.

So I started off from my house with my dog and my directions.  Driving up there was very easy.  I got a little lost from poor signage, but I found the house in question, no problem, and even drove past it and soon entered Massachusetts.  I pulled over beside a large local cemetery (of course), and I let the dog out in some nearby grass away from the cemetery.  (People who let their dogs go to the bathroom in a cemetery at all, especially if they don't clean it up, are committing a blasphemy of some sort.)  Unfortunately, the dog did #2, so I double-bagged it and then threw that into a Dunkin' Donuts paper bag, so at least it didn't smell, and later I threw it away in a garbage can at a nearby gas station, much to the cashier's dismay.  I also entered the cemetery on my own and saw four other people also in it, which is rare.  I looked around very quickly for any stones from real-life people mentioned in my research, but I didn't find any.  I did not look very thoroughly, to be honest, and later I realized it was a waste of time, anyway, because I was now in a small town in Massachusetts, which people living in a house in a small RI town would not be buried in.  Didn't quite think that through.  A few pictures of this cemetery follow:

So I turned back around and headed to The Conjuring's house, which is mostly hidden behind some tall, thick trees, not far from a main road (for Burrillville, anyway) without a breakdown lane.  I saw six other people come out of an SUV and just stand, mostly out of view from the house, so I stepped out of my car.  I noticed the barn, quite a bit away from the house, so a few pictures were taken of that.  I did not want to spend time in front of the house, as I felt very strongly that the homeowners would be ready for that, and would be very unamused.   But I stepped out when I saw the others, and we talked about where they were from, and how long it took to get to this house.  Schenectady, and almost three hours, as I'd mentioned.  I took a couple of pictures of the front door through the many trees, had time to realize that the real house looked nothing at all like the movie's house (it's a lot smaller, and not as obviously old), and a woman next to me swore, and that's when I saw the swirling lights of the police car.

I walked slowly back to my car before he even stopped out of his.  The cop was very, very stern-looking, a countenance that he must practice in the mirror every day.  Nobody is that serious and stern, I swear.  But I'll bet that he gets a lot with that look, so that he doesn't have to say anything, or threaten anyone, or anything.  In fact, he didn't say a word to any of us, and we all went back to our cars immediately and drove away.

I doubt it was the first time he was at that house (it was about one pm when I got there) and I doubt it'll be his last.  In fact, I was surprised not to see a sign of any kind at the house.  I'll bet there'll be one there soon.  I drove away feeling very sheepish.  I mean, I wouldn't be happy if lots of people even drove slowly past my house, never mind actually stop, get out, gawk, and take pictures.

So I feel badly about it all, which is why I won't post pics of the house and barn here.  But, like I said, you're not missing much, as there wasn't much to see to begin with.  On the way back I stopped at a lake and waterfall, pictured here:

And after I left there, I went sight-seeing for a little while, and drove by two or three local cemeteries on both sides of the narrow road, so that it seemed like I was surrounded by them, which I was.  When I saw the open crypt door, I knew I had to turn around and take a picture of that for something I'm writing--a novel that mostly takes place in TB-infested Rhode Island of the 1880s and 1890s, and is told from the third-person limited POV following the doctor of Rhode Island's most famous example of vampire folklore, Mercy Brown (blog entry here).

So I took some pics of that open crypt door, and the very cool rusted-iron Victorian fence that surrounds some of the gravestones, pictured here:

And that's it.  That's my story of traveling to The Conjuring's house.  Truth be told, the lake, waterfall, crypt and cemeteries were more interesting, and much easier to take pictures of.  And I regret not opening that metal door on the inside of the crypt, with the diamond shapes.

What's your favorite recent (or not-so-recent) horror movie?  Have you ever visited the real-life place, or researched the real-life subject matter or story, etc. of that horror movie?

And would you have gone inside that crypt's open door?

The Conjuring--Movie Review

Photo: The house, tree, and noose from the movie, from the movie's Wikipedia page.  The real house in the village of Harrisville, in Burrillville, Rhode Island, looks nothing like this.

Very good, very creepy horror film, supposedly based on a real house in Burrillville (village: Harrisville), Rhode Island, just a minute or two from the MA border.  My visit to this house will be another blog entry for another day.  (I won't tell you--my RI readers) where this house is, because--as I found out myself--the real people living in the real house want their privacy, and they should get it.  I can tell you that there isn't much to see from the road, there's very little breakdown lane room to park for a quick look, and you'll get arrested if you go on the property, so don't even think about it.  It's easy to find the address online, but if you do, and if you go there, at least I can say that I didn't give you the address and lead you there.  Burrillville itself is a pleasant little town, and there's a cemetery nearby with a crypt that has a very creepy door--wide open.  I'll show pictures of that in the next blog entry about my trip up there.

Anyway, the film isn't overdone, and there's a lot of very creepy images and situations.  A few of these made me jump, which is no easy task, as I've seen and read most of the good (and bad) horror stuff out there.  I'm not often affected in movies in any way, so this was a winner.  The best thing I can say about it is that there's not a moment after the movie ended that you say, "Now that I think about it, that was kinda dumb."  The Ring struck me like this.  It was a very creepily effective movie, but when I thought about it, I realized--In a VHS tape?  How did a drowned girl's spirit somehow make it's way through a VHS tape?  What if the tv is one of those miniature ones that people use in their kitchens?  Or, now, on an I-Phone?  The sequel could be set up with the tape in a discount bin, with all of the other VHS tapes that nobody plays anymore.  See what I mean?  The suspension-of-disbelief holds you while you're watching, but the second it loses its grasp of you--you think, "Huh?"

This movie wasn't like that, although in this case, you are asked to buy the fact that the original bad person was a witch.  It's mentioned just once or twice, and the rapidity of the movie makes you accept it because you don't have time not to.  I caught this snare while watching it, and I didn't buy it, but I do buy that there are just some very bad and angry people out there, and I do believe that--if ghosts exist at all--than those very bad and angry people will become very bad and angry ghosts.  That's a lot of ifs, but it all makes sense to me.  (In a philosophical, If and Only If [IFF] kind of way, but whatever.)  The point is that it's all kind of plausible, if you think that way to begin with.  I walked in believing in a very solid Maybe that ghosts exist, and I wasn't swayed either way by watching this.  I'm going to guess that whatever it is you believe about the whole ghost / possession thing, you'll feel the exact same way afterwards.

There was a scene where a priest tells a guy he can perform an exorcism on his authority, once it's established that the okay from the Vatican would take too long to save the possessed person.  This of course a Catholic priest cannot do.  That has to come from the Vatican.  (This was a minor beef of mine with Season Two of American Horror Story, a blog entry to come.)  But, whatever.  At least the guy, or the priest, doesn't just perform the exorcism without even mentioning the Vatican or the process.  You expect these types of things in horror movies, and probably in movies in general.  You either go with it, or you don't.  I suspect that you will here.

There's a creepy tree, a creepy attic, a creepy basement, a creepy crawlspace, a creepy armoire / wardrobe piece of furniture, a creepy-looking thing in the daughters' room, and a very, very creepy doll, which thankfully is more of a symbol of evil than an actual participant or used object.  That's already been done well (Poltergeist) and badly (Chucky) and I just wasn't in the mood for it.  In real life, there was a very creepy-looking barn, where someone apparently hanged herself (or, as the movie frequently and annoyingly said, "hung herself," but, whatever, I'm over it).  This barn was not used in the movie.  I probably won't show it in the blog about my visit, as it isn't my property, and, like I said, there's apparently an old couple living there now, and they deserve their privacy--which they won't get, of course, but I don't have to play a part in that.

Incidentally, this information about the current owners came from a few people who had driven for almost three hours--from Schenectady, New York--only to have to leave fewer than five minutes after they stopped.  I hope it was worth it for them.

So, if you want to be creeped-out and chilled, if not a little jumpy afterwards, this movie is the one for you.  Critics have heavily praised it, and Rotten Tomatoes has given it a very high rating percentage.

I would, too.

If you've seen the movie, please tell me what you thought of it.

On the Premises--So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season

Just a quick note to say that On the Premises (OTP) has purchased my short story, "So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season" and will publish it in its next issue, #19, online at www.onthepremises.com.  I think it's available in .pdf as well.  And it's free to read (I think)!  It'll be available starting March 10th, or thereabouts, so look for it at that site every now and then.  And while, with breathless anticipation, you're waiting for my story (fourth in the issue, I think), why not click the links of other issues and read some good, free stuff?  I just did.  I read the third and fourth stories of Issue #18, an unusual ghost story and a good time-travel piece.  I wouldn't recommend it if I didn't like it myself.

I'll soon set up another blog entry with more concrete information about this publication and about my piece.  After reading that next entry, please feel free to comment about my story once it becomes available.

As always, thank you for reading this blog, and for reading my other pieces.  I appreciate your support.

P.S.--I actually received notification in February from the magazine that they would publish my story, but I wanted to go through the process of seeing edits, and proof sheets, and signing the contract, before I announced it here.  Since I sold the poem, "An Old Man," in January, that means I've been fortunate enough to sell two pieces within four or five weeks of each other.  I'm on a little bit of a roll.  (I just knocked on the wooden table my laptop rests upon, after hoping I also sell something in March.)  I really do believe that this recent wave of good luck is due in part to the support I get from my friends, colleagues, and people like you, my blog readers, who are nice enough to congratulate me, or to pick me up, when I need it.  So, again, thanks very much for doing that, and I mean that sincerely.

Fed-up, gun control, and two movies

Photo: A pile of confiscated guns in Kenya, soon to be set ablaze.  From Wikipedia's "gun control" page.  The caption with the photo is interesting:

"Pyre of smuggled weapons in Uhuru Gardens, Nairobi, Kenya. Original caption states, 'A cache of more than 5,000 smuggled guns ready to be set ablaze at Uhuru gardens (peace grounds) during the peace support effort between the warring countries surrunding kenya and the communities leaving on the porous boarders of Kenya. This was in an effort to bring peace and end killings in the Northern part of Kenya.'"

There's something very logical about burning confiscated guns (hopefully, with the bullets removed first).  After several hundreds of years of doing this, perhaps America could finally start controlling its guns.  
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It's been awhile; you know how the holidays are--busy, busy, busy.  I'm still going to get to the posts about the guys in office who've said impossible-to-believe things, but, first, a few quick hits:

--I hereby serve notice that I am done with people who shout first and think second--if at all.  Relative, friend, co-worker--doesn't matter.  Life is too short to deal with such people.  Done.  I do not use to jest, as Lord Capulet said.

--Another Pawn Stars pet-peeve moment, of a person with a very valuable item who sells it to Rick for a pittance because he was too lazy and/or impatient to sell the item at an auction (and in Vegas, there are tons of auction houses): a guy had some authentic George Washington inauguration coins and buttons, appraised by an expert, valued at $12,000 to $15,000.  The guy sells them to Rick for $3,000.  Even if Rick is right and auction houses take half of the net worth--which I doubt; I think it's more like 15% to 20%, not 50%, and it's probably negotiable in this lousy economy--then the guy still could have gotten $6,000 to $7,500.  And this guy said he didn't need the money desperately, too.

--Maybe now, after the slaughter of the innocents, we can have a bit of gun control?

--And universal health care, specifically for the unstable who need it most?

--I read an article yesterday that said that The Shining is one of Stephen King's least-read books.  Hard to believe.  And that he was so dissatisfied with Kubrick's movie that he wanted the 1997 tv movie to air to show Jack Toarrance's true character arc.

--I have a few hours of wet-vacuuming of my pool cover to do.  There's a small pond on it.

--You hate to speak ill of the dead, or to blame the victim, but if I'm a parent of a boy with a history of personality disorders and instability, I don't own an extensive gun collection, locked up or not.  I'm not being a Monday-morning quarterback here, either.  This really is common sense.

--The movie An American Haunting is The Crucible meets The Exorcist.  Who would've thought to put those together?  Great visuals, even if they defy logic.  The movie really isn't about any of those other movie's themes, of course.

--Just watched the movie Ghost Story, a 1981 film based on Peter Straub's great book.  (One of the best and scariest books ever, in my humble opinion.  Roger Ebert, who 99% of the time writes things I agree with, said he could barely read the book.  But it's nice to know a famous reviewer reads the book before he reviews the movie.)  Anyway, the movie completely ignores the fact that the woman is a Shapeshifter.  In the movie, she really is just a ghost.  But how to explain that the woman, before she was put in the car, had not had a pulse, yet had not been dead?  And that she'd had, ummm, physical union with men seventy years after she'd been put in the car?  She still looked good, too.)  Didn't know ghosts could do that.  And it's odd to see Fred Astaire and John Houseman in a horror movie.

--Nothing good can ever come out of what happened in Newtown, but finally the media gave us something positive about teachers.

The Restorer by Amanda Stevens

photo: Book cover from the author's website, www.amandastevens.com

So I'm standing in Stop & Shop, where I buy many of my books these days--which is an issue I'll probably take up with my blog--when I saw this book.  Quick to judge a book by its cover, literally and metaphorically, I saw the image of a seemingly-weeping stone angel, its wings drooped and its face under its right arm, its left arm hanging loosely over a cemetery mausoleum.  The caption reads, "Every cemetery has a story.  Every grave, its secrets."  And Publishers Weekly said it was a "creepy, atmospheric tale."  On the back, Heather Graham (I read this quote because I thought it was the super-sexy actress commenting, but alas...) said that the author "...has managed the difficult feat of combining charms and chills..."  Now, I've been doing research about graveyards and gravestones for my novel, The Gravediggers.  And I admit to a morbid fascination of this stuff.  (For example, I can look at the front of a New England gravestone and tell you the approximate year of construction without looking at the dates.  It's all in the skulls, angels or urns on the front, or the flat or rounded shoulders, or the rock used--thin black slate is much older...I can do the same with the backs of baseball cards, but I digress.)  As this all had some slight bearing on The Gravediggers, I thought I'd see how someone else handled a few things I have to work with.

After buying it, I realized it was a Harlequin book, and I became slightly ashamed of myself.  As I'd already spent the money--and as I've been sniffling with a sore throat and blocked ears the past few days--I thought I'd try it anyway, and I would breeze past the sultry scenes.

Much to my surprise--and bias--I have to say that it was a very good, quick, and, indeed, a chilly and atmospheric read.  Most of it does take place in graveyards, which can get old pretty quick, but the author manages to describe the same things in different ways--or, in some cases, repeating creepy things to good effect.  The doom and gloom never gets old.  There is no actual bodice-ripping to speak of, thank God, and the romance is kept to a minimum--much of it one-sided until the end.  The mysteries are mysterious enough, though the book focuses more on the atmosphere than on the mystery.  It's solved very quickly, and perhaps abruptly, at the end, and the revelation probably won't surprise you.  (I have to admit that I nailed the villain right away.  But that's me.)  The ending was satisfying for me despite this, and the author carefully and wisely ends it with an open door to the sequel--though in an author-intrusion/speaking to the reader way that was consistent throughout the book, and which I could have done without.

The characters are (mostly) believable, as are the plot points and situations.  The main character, also the 1st person narrator, is a graveyard restorer (hence the title).  This is apparently not a well-paying job, though there's obviously plenty of old graveyards in the south and in New England that need tending.  I was always under the impression that local historical societies took care of this sort of thing themselves, but I suppose it's plausible that they may seek contract help.  Since these societies are vastly underfunded with local tax dollars and count heavily on volunteers--even in the administration--I wonder if this part is very plausible, but whatever.  You've got to get her in there.  (I volunteer a tiny bit for a local historical society, and the woman in charge of it is a volunteer who goes into the office only on Mondays.)  Of course, there aren't any symbologists, either, but Dan Brown got away with it.  (And this book mentions that very term, and is heavy, but not dependent, on symbols, and secret societies, etc.)  Anyway, the focus isn't on the main character's job, but is instead on her ability to see spirits--and the dangers they present.  Her father had also had the gift (or curse) and was also a graveyard restorer, and he gave her a set of rules to live by, because otherwise the spirits will latch on to you, forever.  As in, even after death.  The Harlequin focus, if you will, is on how she throws all those rules away when the haunted and brooding police detective enters her life.  The number one rule: Don't acknowledge the ghosts.  Don't even look at them.  If you do, they'll latch on to you.  She never dates, either, because of how often she sees ghosts, and their haunted hosts.  And, besides, who wants to date someone who smells like death all the time?

Of course, why someone who insists she needs to stay away from all these ghosts continues to take jobs working in cemeteries is never addressed.  I mean, where else would you run into more ghosts than a cemetery?  But, whatever, suspension of disbelief, and all that.  The main character is likeable and the minor characters are passable (though not fleshed out and a little interchangeable), so if you're appreciably creeped out by Gothic things, and if you can remember your teenage and college years when you walked alone in graveyards at times, pick this up and read it.  I'm going back to Stop & Shop to pick up the sequel now.

And, about buying books at Stop & Shop now that there's only one bookstore outlet in the state...

Dogtown

Reading a really interesting book right now, maybe one of seven at this point.  (I read books as I write them, apparently--many at once, taking an effort to finish one.)  Anyway, it's called Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in A New England Ghost Town.  Buy this.  Very interesting and well-written.  Alternates chapters between a notorious murder there in the 1980s and its history since 1623.  Interspersed are shorter sections of the author's reason for going there; and how her listlessness matches that of other notable people who have been drawn there.  The place seems to be a magnet for the "lost," many of whom become found, but also some who have not, such as the murderer.  The town now is a ghost town.  All that's there are markers of old cellar holes, glacier rocks with odd messages carved into them, courtesy of an eccentric millionaire, tons of walking paths, many of which end nowhere, and a sense of oddness and loneliness.  Apparently nobody has lived there since the early to mid 1800s, when many citizens died from disease and the Revolutionary War, and the leftover widows kept dogs for company.  Then the widows died, the dogs went wild, and everyone else left for the Gloucester shores (Dogtown is in the higher ground of Cape Ann, which is actually an island.) or stayed there and died as their houses fell apart around them.  Truly fascinating book, odd and interesting in its design.  If you're a writer, you'll want to emulate this.  Underappreciated book available for cheap.  Buy it.  It made me also want to buy Anita Diamant's The Last Days of Dogtown, which I did via Borders.com for $1.99.  This book brings to literary life many of the real people the first book mentions.  Read the first, then the latter.  If you're like me, you'll want to visit Dogtown, Massachusetts.

A Winter Haunting--Dan Simmons

Very effectively creepy.  Reminds me a lot of an Aidan Quinn/Kate Beckinsale movie, Haunted, and John Gielgud, in which everyone's a ghost, and everything's haunted, and that the beautiful mansion he saw was actually a decrepit wreck of a former mansion.  Both this book and that movie have an almost sex scene, too.  No, check that--Quinn and Beckinsale have a scene, maybe the first nude scene with a "ghost" ever on film.  And the dead talk to each other, and there's animosity...Well, anyway, both are credibly creepy, hard to do these days, when we all know the tripes of horror and ghost stories.  That this book succeeds despite that is deserving of applause in of itself.  But perhaps the best thing to say about it is that I read all 371 pages in half a day, and this after finishing another long novel, Straub's A Dark Matter, today as well.  Not feeling well, physically and psychically.  Anyway, a good psychological tale that tips its hat to the works of Henry James, and a few other works of creepiness...though I could have done without the Egyptian gods parts, and the extensive Beowulf references, but you need something to set your writing apart, right?  The ending of the occasional ghost-narrator taking over the recuperating, and coma-resting, body of the main character is sort of inspired, and not believable, and a nice touch, all at the same time.  Another Dan Simmons winner.