Uncanny Tales

While searching the British Library on flickr for artwork to use in a Creepmas project, I found cover art for Uncanny Tales by Mrs Molesworth which peeked my interest.  Published in 1896, full of ghostly stories, it's a nice collection if you like curling up next to the fire on a cold winter's night. 

Available at The Project Gutenberg, if I were to rank them by favorites they would appear just as they do in the table of contents. 

THE SHADOW IN THE MOONLIGHT.
"THE MAN WITH THE COUGH."
"HALF-WAY BETWEEN THE STILES."
AT THE DIP OF THE ROAD.
"—— WILL NOT TAKE PLACE."
THE CLOCK THAT STRUCK THIRTEEN.

The Shadow In The Moonlight being my favorite and the most suitable for a ghostly Victorian Christmas story and The Clock That Struck Thirteen being the least. 

Some of the stories are supernatural in nature while others only appear to be at first. Will Not Take Place is neither, but well written. 

The last story was just disappointing. The eerie clock failed to live up to expectations and sadly the fiercely independent headstrong female protagonist learns it's best to always listen to a man and let him take care of you. 

But overall it's a nice collection if you enjoy spending your Creepmas curled up with spooky Victorian stories.  

Victorian Ghost Stories

Every Creepmas at least one person mentions the series of Valancourt Books containing Victorian Christmas ghost stories, but I don't recall anyone giving them an actual review.  I did read some of the reviews on book sites, but they seemed more from Victorian era enthusiast, rather than Creepmas fans.  This year I decided to find out if this collection was really all that.  

My library doesn't carry these books, neither online or brick and mortar.  If I knew they were the most awesome books ever, I would buy them.  But I do so hate to buy a dud, when the best you can do is donate it, so someone else can experience disappointment at a reduced price.   

So I cheated.  Except for "The Haunted Rock: A Legend of Port Guerron Cove", I found every story for free online.  I haven't given detailed reviews so as not to give anything of the stories away, but merely an opinion of whether I enjoyed them or not and deem them suitable for Creepmas. 

One of my favorite resources for this project was gutenberg.org.  They have a vast selection, some in multiple formats if you prefer kindle or audio.  

The stories contained in the first volume of the Valancourt books are as follows: 

1. "The Tapestried Chamber" by Sir Walter Scott

2. "The Old Nurse's Story," by Elizabeth Gaskell
3. "Horror: A True Tale," by John Berwood Harwick
4. "Bring Me a Light!" by Anonymous
5. "Old Hooker's Ghost," by Anonymous
6. "The Ghost's Summons," by Ada Buisson
7. "Jack Layford's Friend," by Anonymous
8. "How Peter Parley Laid a Ghost," by Anyonymous
9. "A Mysterious Visitor," by Ellen Wood
10. "The Haunted Rock," by W.W. Fenn
11. "The Lady's Walk," by Margaret Oliphant
12. "The Captain of the Pole-Star," by Arthur Conan Doyle
13. "The Doll's Ghost," by F. Marion Crawford


The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott - This was a good story, but not great.  It would have needed to build suspense and flesh out the scary bits to be truly effective. Although I could see where a great orator could give the illusion of both with the material at hand.

The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell - I really liked this one, both the plot of the story and the nurse's delivery of it are well done.  There's one little plot point I would have liked addressed, but it can easily be overlooked.   Overall I would consider this a perfect Creepmas tale.

I also read her other stories in the collection Curious, If True: Strange Tales and enjoyed them all. Some have a supernatural element and some are merely the evil that men do, but all are worth reading.

Horror: A True Tale by John Berwick Harwood - The format of this is visually atrocious, it could really benefit from being broken up into smaller paragraphs. There's an audio version on youtube. Otherwise I really enjoyed the story, well written and very suspenseful.  The build up was fantastic, sadly the ending was a bit of a letdown.  I think if it was a slightly different story it would have been excellent, but I don't want to give anything away. 

Bring Me A Light! by Jane Margaret Hooper - Proper ghost story, with proper ghosts doing proper haunting.  There's a quite tragic event that led to the hauntings, but the overall story isn't scary.  I still enjoyed it very much.

Old Hooker's Ghost or Christmas Gambols at Huntingfield Hall - As a story, it was a pleasant read, even though entirely predictable. As a Creepmas story, it was disappointing.

The Ghost's Summons by Ada Buisson - I found this one to be rather meh.   Sorry Ada.

Jack Layford's Friend - Warning Spoiler Alert.  But not much of one, it's pretty apparent early on what's going on in the story.  But even though the surprises aren't all that surprising, it could have been a rather enjoyable Christmas mystery. What ruined it for me was the introduction of the villainess, who is described as a "n-word" who has "...managed to get some of the dye out of her hands and face."  Even without the racism, her character is immediately diminished because her looks aren't pleasing to a male guest. I assume the author was trying to convey the man's intuition that something is off about her, but using dark skin and homeliness to foreshadow evil intent is an antiquated trope that has not aged well.

How Peter Parley Laid a Ghost  - This one too was a mystery rather than a ghost story.  Not scary in the least, more of a cautionary tale about foolishness.

A Mysterious Visitor by Ellen Henry Wood - Not a Christmastime story, but a proper old-fashioned ghost story.

The Lady's Walk by Margaret Oliphant - At around 200 pages it's much longer than any of the other stories.   There is a ghost, but it's a friendly spirit and this story is more about the living.  It's not a Creepmas story if you are looking for scares, but a very enjoyable read if you appreciate a good haunting.

The Captain of the Pole-Star by Arthur Conan Doyle - I'm disappointed to have to say I found this to be a very blah ghost story.  I felt more uneasiness for the crew concerning the weather conditions of their voyage.

On the plus side it reminded me of how much I do like Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". For a treat here it is read by Ian McKellen  or the brilliant rendition by Iron Maiden.  In 8th grade I snuck out to see Maiden in concert, got grounded forever, and didn't learn my lesson because I would make the same choice all over again. Then in high school when we read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" my English teacher also had us listen to Maiden's version.  For that and other reasons, he was pretty much the coolest English teacher ever.  But I digress...

The Doll's Ghost by F. Marion Crawford - The crux of this story was terrifying, but I do wonder if it would have been less so if I wasn't a parent.   As it was, my heart was in my throat until the end.  Although I would consider this an excellent story, I still wouldn't choose it for Creepmas.

In summary, I enjoyed most of the stories. Very few of them were scary, but at least half were good ghost stories. Of the scarier ones, none were on par with the eerie, spine tingling I enjoy from stories such as Smee.

I gather the Valancourt books also give a short intro about each author and when the stories were originally published, so I missed out on that, but even with that addition I think overall I would have been disappointed if I had purchased this one for my collection.

I'd love to hear other opinions if anyone has read these. I'm especially curious to find out what "The Haunted Rock" was all about.

The Ghost of Danny, Fried Caterpillars and Bugmas

I found two Creepmassy South African Christmas traditions, but the references to them were only short blurbs in lists about weird holiday traditions.  Now it could be that no one is writing about them in English.  South Africa has 11 different official languages, which makes searching difficult even with translation tools.  But I found some Creepmas gold while I was digging, so it was worth the trip down the rabbit hole.

Alright so maybe these are legit traditions or maybe all the lists I read are repeating the same misinformation.  I would love to have someone confirm or deny, but until then, taken with a grain of salt...

The first tradition is the telling of the story of Danny the ghost.  He was a naughty little boy who ate the cookies set out for Santa and for this trespass he was beaten to death by his grandmother and now he haunts around Christmastime to discourage other would-be cookie thieves.  Again I only found references to this and none actually sited any sources. 

The second tradition is to eat Mopane worms, the caterpillars of Emperor moths for Christmas dinner.  I did find what seems to be an authentic reference and recipe at The African Gourmet.  That was the only one I found that mentioned Christmas, though there is no doubt that mopane worms are readily eaten in general, either dried as a snack or in stews as a meal.

This is a pretty good article on mopane worms.

This video shows the caterpillars being picked, the guts are then squeezed out and the skins are cooked until crispy.  A restaurant scene at the end shows the skins being cooked up with a sauce.

This video shows trying them both dried and reconstituted in a recipe.  I appreciate how she describes the flavors and textures, like you would expect someone to do when trying a new food and not being all weird about it, like I would be.  Also she mentions doing a thing she calls Bugmas...

…so of course I had to check out her channel emmymadeinjapan and Bugmas is counting down the last five days until Christmas by eating bugs.   She also changed it up and did Gutmas one year.  There's your Creepmas dinner menu all planned out.

I can't eat meat.  I don't care what animal it comes from, the smells, the textures and the flavors, they  make me gag.  I can't even eat fake meat that closely mimics the real stuff.  I'm even picky about how I prepare vegetables because of texture issues.  So people like this, that can objectively try anything, kind of amaze me. 

Funny caption picture aside, she really does take a neutral approach to trying different insects for Bugmas, no drama.  I like that she doesn't play up a gross out or shock angle, just an honest food review.

She also does a video on lutefisk and lefse which I guess are a thing here in the Midwest but I've never had them.  The lefse isn't gross, from what I understand it's like a potato crepe, but lutefisk sounds nasty.

When I was a kid, a common phrase used in conjunction with offering various foods that always looked as bad as they smelled, was "You should eat this, it'll put hair on your chest."   I'm curious now, do people say that outside the Midwest?  Is it a uniquely Wisconsin thing to say to an eight year old girl while offering her a jar of pickled* herring? Or was it just my weird family?

There was a time in my childhood that I actually enjoyed eating cheese curds dipped in horseradish, but it did not produced any chest hairs as promised.  

*Pickled things seemed very popular when I was a kid**.  I remember bars (or more correctly, taverns) always had large jars of pickled eggs and pickled pigs feet.  I never actually witnessed anyone eat the latter, but I always watched the consumption of pickle eggs with a sort of horrified fascination.  

**Yes as a kid in Wisconsin I spent a lot of time in bars, that's where everyone gathered after church and for Friday fish fry's.  

Creepmas Cookies

I said I was going to try making Yeti cookies and I did, but it wasn't quite the effort I put into the Krampus ones. The kids had their cookies to decorate and I had to make some "normal" ones, so there wasn't a lot left for me to play with. To be a honest my Yeti's are kind of a bust, but I have high hopes of doing better next year. I do like the one in the middle, he turned out pretty cute. For him I used an upside-down snowman cookie cutter.

I tried some mouth/tongues similar to the Krampus with rolled out gumdrops and black sugar. The horns are peppermint candy corns. The center Yeti's nose is a piece of Buncha Crunch, which is a nugget of Nestle's Crunch. If you have low expectations for peppermint candy corns, these will meet those expectations. They also infuse the Buncha Crunch with their lackluster peppermint flavor. But boy do they make cute little festive horns.

Here are some of the kid's cookies, upper right is a gingerbread man bleeding from multiple stab wounds, below that is a Death Snowflake, the candy corn being it's death ray and the skulls and tombstone representing the number of planets it has destroyed. At the very bottom with a candy corn tie is a mobster snowman, and above him is a vampire snowbat with candy corn fangs. They might taste like minty crap, but those candy corns sure are versatile.

Next year I plan on making more ghosts, I like how he turned out with the black skulls for facial features. The coffin on the left is my second one, definitely an improvement compared to the one on the right. Word of advice don't try to edge a coffin in one continuous band of frosting, it almost looks like a flipflop.

Second word of advice, less is more when it comes to color. 

I like the Creepmas garland, but I should have made it with fewer colors.

This was going to be a Yeti and somehow it ended up as an angry Yule goat. 

I think I need more of these next year too.

And more unicorn snowbat creatures, with bone arms.

I thought these bats were cute too.

And just to play fair I made holly with a bat cookie.
It would probably look more like holly if I had bothered to make green frosting. 

I used my usual recipe for the cookies and frosting. I don't believe I've ever made buttercream frosting in advance, but time constraints necessitated it this year. I just let it come to room temp and whipped it again before using. It was kind of nice not having the mess of making frosting on top of the mess of decorating cookies, I don't know why I've never done this before.

Another thing I liked this year, and maybe this has been around for a while and I'm just finally noticing, was the little $1 packets of holiday sprinkles at Michaels. It was nice buying a variety of holiday cheer in reasonable amounts that will get used up in the next two years. 

Creepmas Ornaments

Any Creepmas tree would feel honored to be adorned with these ornaments. 

Cthulhu Christmas by WarcraftsByEuphyley

Flying Spaghetti Monster by WarcraftsByEuphyley

Chistmas Ghost by LaFemmePetit

Sugar Skulls by diablitosheart

Skulls by diablitosheart

Earl the Zombie by DapperGourd

Leonard the Zombie by DapperGourd

Hand Painted Lightbulb by TheGnarledBranch

Santa Clauctopus by bambisclaydesign

Ghost of Christmas Past by AuntLilliesAttic

Lump of Coal by AuntLilliesAttic

Grrrgl by kezeff

Zombie Claus by kezeff

This rat is listed as a vinyl toy, but it looks like a Creepmas ornament to me. 

My second thought is man, Rat Fink has not aged well at all. 

Dobu Rat by Kagemaru

Halloween Flamingos

My original vision was two dozen flamingos strewn across the front yard in various stages of demise. Decapitated, gut shot, rotting, tortured plastic flesh, pink flamingo carnage as far as the eye could see with a few flamingo cenobites thrown in to instill order. 

But I felt the kids were too young to see mommy hacking away at little pink bodies and I didn’t know how well those little plastic bodies would respond to the kind of treatment I had in mind. Instead I purchased only a half dozen flamingos from eBay, for a very reasonable price, if you don’t mind not having authentic Featherstone’s and outfitted them with very tame Halloween costumes that the kids came up with based on their interests at the time.

My only complaint is the legs don’t stay put. I don't know if this is just a problem with the knock-offs, I'm not really a flamingo connoisseur. The wire legs were always popping out of the slots molded into the plastic. So I ended up gluing mine in, but then they take more space to store. One of them had a defect, we’ll talk about him later. 

I had two criteria for the costumes. One was to use stuff on hand and the other was to use materials that would hold up to the cold and the rain.

I'll explain the least obvious accessories like Indiana Jones’ jacket, which is made from a child’s pirate costume boot cover.  

His lasso is a rope, the handle is what I call a modified noose, but I’m sure there is real name for it. 

My dad passed on a wealth of knowledge to me, such as don’t get any jailhouse tattoos and don’t steal anything that’s not worth going to prison for. I’m sensing a pattern here. He also taught me how to make a noose.  No context, just an out of the blue, come here kid and let me show you something father and daughter bonding moment. It's because of my warped childhood that I’m always surprised at how many people don’t know how to make a noose, so let me enlighten you if you don't already know. 

It’s really very easy and handy for decorating. No, not for Better Homes and Gardens, but definitely for stringing up a skeleton or two for Halloween. Never, never ever, ever ever, (Is that Taylor Swift singing in the background?), never, ever, never put a noose around any living creature. Not for just a second, not to be funny, not because your inner child wants to clean the gene pool. It’s not cool.

That being said, here’s a video that shows you just how easy it is. I’ve heard it’s illegal to make a noose, that a hangman’s noose has 13 coils, that 13 is the requisite number to make it big enough to snap a neck after a short drop with a sudden stop, and that the number of coils is why 13 has been deemed an unlucky number (Totally unfounded, nasty rumor, 13 is an awesome number once you get to know it. Now 4 on the other hand seems a little shifty. You don’t hear much about 4, kind of makes you wonder what it’s up too, right?). I have not seen anything factual to give credence to any of those statements, but I think thirteen loops looks good and for macabre decorating is definitely in the spirit of things.

This faux bullwhip is similar to the hangman's noose except just make one loop, wrap it, feed the end of the wrap through the loop and then pull the long end of the rope so the loop pulls tight. No, I don’t actually recommend using a fuchsia jump rope, but you get the idea.

Moving on, the witch's stringy hair is plastic Halloween garland. Her cape or shawl is made out of black pet screen. Pet screen also works for toddlers that like to press up against screen doors. 

Most of the other accessories are made out of craft foam sheets. Here are instructions to make an easy tutu like the ballerina has.  My favorite is the mummy and he's just wrapped in cheesecloth.  I think an army of mummy flamingos would look awesome.

The ghost was the one with the bum leg hole. After numerous fixes I gave up and he floated from a tree for a while and then he was abducted by aliens and this happened.

 

The alien flamingo's eyes are made out of the round plastic toy capsules that come out of quarter machines.  I boiled two halves in water until they were soft, and then wrapped a rubber band around the middle to squeeze them into an oblong shape. Careful they will be hot, so use tongs or thick gloves to hold onto it while wrapping.  Let them cool, and spray paint the inside black.  The edges will need to be trimmed for them to lay against the face.  Trim a little at a time until you get a good fit and then hot glue them on. 

His spaceship is nothing fancy. It's a circle of foam I had, with some cardboard, covered in tinfoil with clear marbles and battery operated micro mini lights glued along the outside edge, covered in plastic wrap for waterproofing. It looks pretty good for a 15 minute project with the lights twinkling and reflecting off the wrap, marbles and tinfoil.

Best part, nobody questions why he doesn't have any legs. 

By the way if you're thinking, "But wait tinfoil and aliens don't mix.", you should probably check out this site, the old tinfoil hat isn't nearly as effective as you may have been led to believe.

Next step is to make papier mache flamingo clones, then I can do all sorts of dastardly things to them.

This has nothing to do with Halloween, more to do with Home Owner Associations and is possibly the best lawn flamingo story ever written.  Most importantly it makes me chuckle, enjoy A Flock of Lawn Flamingos by Pat Murphy.