Posts Tagged ‘Ghoul (novel)’

A Much Needed Trip to Marietta

Posted: November 12, 2023 in Reflections, Tales across the US
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The Ohio river at the tip of Marietta’s downtown at sunset.

Y’all, life has been stressful lately.

You guys know I have a day job, right? Well, without getting into details, mine has gotten super busy lately, to the point where I’ve been working late nights. Consequently, I’ve been unable to do as much writing as I would like, which only stresses me out more. Plus, everything is more expensive these days, especially gas and food. All this and then some were really stressing me out, so I was in desperate need of a vacation.

Luckily, Friday was Veterans Day (thank you to all vets for your service) and my workplace gave me Friday off. And, since I was already planning on going down to Marietta for that event with Hidden Marietta, I decided to make it a weekend-long mini-vacation and have some fun.

And you know what? It was just what the doctor ordered! I just got back from Marietta a few hours ago and these past couple of days were among the most relaxing of my life.

So, if you don’t know, Marietta is the oldest town in Ohio and is located in southeast Ohio along the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers. It has a beautiful historic downtown section, the crown of which (in my opinion, anyway) is the Historic Lafayette Hotel. It’s a beautiful and historic hotel, as well as a very haunted hotel, so I like to stay there when possible.

The facade of the Lafayette.

Sadly, I didn’t experience anything paranormal (unless I dreamed it), but I stayed in a lovely little room and was able to walk around downtown and check out the shops and restaurants, something I’ve always wanted to do.

My room in the Lafayette.

I also got to visit the Mound Cemetery, which is such a cool place. It’s located in the center of Marietta’s residential district and contains graves of people who fought in the American Revolution and helped found the earliest settlements in Ohio. Being among all those people who helped shape this country from its earliest days was kind of humbling.

Entrance to Mound Cemetery
Tomb of unknown soldiers who fought in the revolution. Quite amazing to visit.

I also got to stop by the cemetery’s namesake, a giant Indian burial mound in the center of the cemetery. It rises like a small mountain, and you can actually walk up some stone steps along the side of the mound to the top, where there are a couple of benches and a raised stone denoting where a time capsule was buried. I climbed those steps and the view was breathtaking. These photos don’t do it justice, but I hope you got some of the magnificence of the mound and the surrounding cemetery.

The mound. It looks a lot more awesome and imposing in person, believe me.
The view from atop the mound. In the center, you can see the stone where the time capsule is.
Another view from atop the mound.

Pretty cool, right?

Also, there was this.

I know what you’re thinking. What was in there, how did it get out, and should we be worried? It actually reminded me of Ghoul by Brian Keene, where a ghoul is released from a tomb in an old cemetery like this one. I actually reached out to him on BlueSky about this, and he said it was either a ghoul or an incredibly powerful groundhog (new Ohio cryptid?).

Whatever caused this, both the broken-open tomb and the mound melded in my mind to create an interesting idea for a story. I would like to write it someday, though of course, there are a million things to get through before I can even consider writing it.

After that, I visited the Anchorage Mansion for the event (you can read about the last time I was there here). Sadly, unlike last time I did not experience anything paranormal beyond a few doors that opened and closed when I wasn’t looking (probably just a coincidence). A friend who was there did see a ghost, but I wasn’t in the room. I also only sold one book, which was a letdown. But I did get to see some friends, and one of them did join me for dinner afterwards, which was nice.

And then today, I had breakfast and then went to a frozen custard parlor for a snack. I then visited the Campus Martius museum, which chronicles the settlement and history of the area, and has some of the oldest buildings still in existence in Ohio on its grounds. No photos of those, but I did enjoy stopping there and I even found a gift for a friend of mine for the holidays. It was a good way to wrap up the trip before hitting the road for Columbus.

And you know what? I really needed this. As I said before, life has been really crazy lately, and this trip was super relaxing. Yeah, there were a few hiccups and those weren’t fun, but I still had a wonderful time walking around Marietta and seeing more of this beautiful town.

And I think we all need these breaks from life’s stresses every now and again. It isn’t easy to get away and may cost some money, but with the world the way it is, it’s important to take care of your physical and mental health and find time to unwind. I honestly feel like I can take on whatever this week throws at me with more ease than I would if I hadn’t taken this trip (helps that I can’t work late this week for various reasons). Perhaps I’ll even be able to stay chilled out until my next vacation, whenever that is.

I hope you get to take the time to care of yourself and enjoy a different locale as well very soon.

Have you gone anywhere for a mini-vacation lately? Where did you go and what did you do? And did it help with your stress?

One last thing, Followers of Fear: since Friday morning, thirty-two people have downloaded copies of my short story Car Chasers. This does not include how many people read it off the website itself, so the number could be even higher. Thank you all for checking it out. This is exactly the response I was hoping for, and I hope this response continues and gets more people interested in my work.

If you haven’t checked out Car Chasers but would like to, you can find it on my Book Links and Excerpts page, along with all my other work. It’s completely free to read and download, so I hope you’ll check it out and let me know what you think.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’m going to try to get to bed early tonight so I’m well-rested for work tomorrow. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares.

Emotional Horror

Posted: October 23, 2021 in Reflections, Writing
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Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Lately, I’ve been deep into two very different books of horror. The first, which I finished last night, is What One Wouldn’t Do, an anthology of horror stories around the idea of “what wouldn’t you do for…what? Power? Revenge? Love? Etc?” The other is Ghoul by Brian Keene, a coming-of-age horror novel about three boys who discover a ghoul living in the graveyard near their homes. They’re both very good, very different from one another, and both deal in emotional horror.

Emotional horror is horror that relies more on the feelings the story provokes in the reader than a supernatural/paranormal entity or a serial killer or anything like that. And yes, I’m aware that all horror tries to provoke an emotional response in readers. Namely terror and fear. But this is a much more subtle kind of horror. Emotional horror scares you with the situation the characters are in and their responses, particularly their emotional responses, to the situation.

A good example of this is the 2015 movie The Witch. You may have noticed, but the titular witch is actually pretty peripheral to the story. She doesn’t show up except to maybe push events in the story. In total, I think she’s maybe only in the film for three whole minutes, if even that. Rather, the horror of the story is how each character reacts to the witch’s interference in their lives. It starts with the baby being kidnaped, then with the older son disappearing into the woods and then coming back horrifically changed. The kid has an ecstatic vision before dying, which leads to the family to believe they’re being victimized by a witch, who could possibly be one of them. And you’re terrified not by the witch or what could be her supernatural influence on the characters. You’re scared by their paranoia, their heartbreak and distrust, and how quickly things devolve from here, leading to an awful, irreversible decision on the part of the protagonist.

The true horror of this story may not be from the titular monster

This is the kind of horror both What One Wouldn’t Do and Ghoul deal in. Many of the stories in the former deal with supernatural elements, but the horror itself is what drives the characters to commit heinous acts or to make deals with the devil or go through insane challenges, and then seeing the fallout from those decisions. And for the latter, while the titular monster is scary in its way, it’s no Pennywise. Rather, a lot of the horror we experience is through the main characters, twelve-year-old boys who are becoming disillusioned by the world around them through the adults in their lives. It’s honestly heartbreaking to see the adults around them fail them so spectacularly, and one scene in particular was so upsetting, I had to post about it on Facebook and Twitter just to get my emotions out.

So, how do you write these scenes? Honestly, it’s not easy. I’m not sure you can set out to write a story that deliberately tugs at your heartstrings and fills you with the emotions the characters are feeling. It’s kind of like how you can’t write a story around a theme. Instead, you take a story and the theme evolves naturally from your working on it. Only when that theme has revealed itself can you play with it and the story together to bring out the best in both.

That was certainly the case with Cressida, the story I wrote that was published in Into the Deep (click here to check it out if you haven’t yet). While it’s a horror story and a mermaid story, it’s not a horror story about mermaids, though they aren’t the pretty fishtailed supermodels Disney animated, either. Rather, the mermaid is in herself a catalyst for the true horror, which is what the characters do upon encountering a mermaid who shares an uncanny resemblance to a deceased family member of theirs.

But when I set out to write that story, I never intended that the horror would come from the characters’ emotional and psychological reactions. I wrote the story because it sounded like a lot of fun to work on and I made changes to the storyline along the way to better bring out the horror I was discovering. The result is Cressida, which I feel is some of the best work I’ve written yet.

You know, that makes me realize something: in emotional horror, whatever is happening in the plot, be it mermaids, ghouls, necromancy, witches, etc., is often not the main focus of the story (even if it’s in the story’s title). Rather, they’re plot devices, tools to draw out the horror hidden within the characters’ emotional responses.

My story in this anthology didn’t start out as an emotionally-driven horror story. It just ended up that way.

I guess that makes emotional horror a kind of psychological horror.

Anyway, that’s what’s going through my mind at this time. The fact that I was getting into all these stories with similar kinds of horror at the same time got my brain working, so I decided to write it out. I’d love to hear what your thoughts on this subject are. Let’s talk in the comments below.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I leave for my trip tomorrow, so I likely won’t be around as much as I would otherwise be. However, I’ll be around on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, so check there for updates if you start to miss me.

Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night, pleasant nightmares, and there’s only a week till Halloween. Prepare to give yourselves to the dance of terror and to raise the old gods so we can all enjoy their infernal gifts. If you do not, I suggest you run.

Bye!