The Hand.

 When I was growing up, we spent many years living in an old farmhouse amidst the West Virginia countryside...we had no cable and we cooked our meals and heated the house with an old wood stove in the kitchen. This place was very desolate and very quiet, and I remember an hour-long bus ride (at least) to get home after school.  My mother worked a lot during this time...and my brothers were older, with vehicles and lives of their own...leaving me (4th grader) to come home to an empty, old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere by myself. We also had two options when it came to getting from the 'main' narrow, back country road to our house...you either crossed the creek by foot or you crossed the old swinging bridge that hovered across that creek.  I hated that bridge (4th grader), it always seemed to be ominously towering over the dark water below...and it always seemed ready to snap at any moment. When I saw this photo of the bridge, if it weren't for the lack of an old, white house standing in the trees across that creek, I would have been certain it was the bridge that led to this childhood home of mine.

But every weekend, when we were all home, my mom would usually rent a movie from the local video store and we'd all huddle around our little 12" t.v. to watch it.  Once, near Halloween, she rented an old silly movie entitled 'The Hand'...and I will never understand why that movie bothered me the way that it did...but man, did it bother me...haunted me (4th grader). For weeks I was convinced that I would lose a hand during some horrible and traumatic childhood experience and that severed thing would come back to murder me and my family...for whatever reason a hand would want to commit such atrocities.  I can even remember there being a old leather glove in the weeds next to the field where my horse resided...and I made excuses about how I couldn't feed my horse for weeks because I believed an old evil hand was in that glove, waiting to take hold of me (4th grader).  

One day after school, I staggered across that swinging bridge...and as I reached the end I looked across to the front porch of that old, dark house...and there was something different...on the handle of that old screen door was perched a hand...a hand without a body.  On that cool autumn evening, I crumbled into a terrified heap at the foot of that bridge (4th grader)...I sat there sobbing as the sun left the sky at an early hour and there was not a soul for miles to help me in my situation.  I remember how cold it was on that bridge, the feeling of the air swinging around it, and hearing its old cables creak as my home, my solace was guarded by some disembodied appendage. I was stuck between two evils, but I chose the lesser of the two.

I'll never forget seeing the headlights of my brothers jeep thrashing across the creek as he drove into the yard, I was absolutely certain that in his haste, he was coming to rescue me from that God-forsaken hand. He disappeared for a moment and I heard his evil, maniacal laugh as he approached me with that stiff beast with 5 fingers. As I stood there shaking and wiping tears from my cold face, he stomped onto the bridge and threw that hand at me...I quickly grabbed it, realizing it was rubber... while my brother violently pushed me toward the house saying, 'get inside, stupid'


bridge image via SouthernVisions

Word of the Day

via Other-Wordly

Lame.

Finally got some cornstalks from a local farm today and put them out front.  We are the only house on the entire street (and possibly neighborhood) with Halloween decorations up...I'm going to give these people the benefit of the doubt and assume that the past week of rain has simply pushed their holiday spirit to a later date.

 Hoping this isn't the way it works around here...but I'm happy with our little porch.

Word of the Day

via Other-Wordly

Witchy

via jbpics

Charcoal and Bone

Gorgeous.

the art of David Smith

Carving night

I feel as if October has been eluding me, so we decided to carve a pumpkin tonight.

I asked my other half if he carved pumpkins as a child...
his response was, 'I don't know...I don't really remember...' to which I replied, 'if you don't remember carving pumpkins, then it never happened'

Warm smile

via blackcathy

Talkdemonic: The Last Untouched

Good for my soul...

click me

Word[s] of the Day

via Other-Wordly

Vania Zouravliov

How I love the work of this fellow. 

the art of Vania Zouravliov

Tiny Halloween.

Found these in an antique shop down the street, I have no idea if they qualify as antique...or even vintage, but they look the part...and I am quite fond of them

I'm going to have to adopt some very tiny children.

By the light of the moon...

drawing by drazen kozjan

Down Under

I believe this sin against nature is called a 'Huntsman spider'...and it's one of the many reasons why I will never travel to Australia. That, and my being banned from the country due to my underground Kangaroo boxing circle. 

Except I never forgive...

via ThisIsn'tHappiness

Word of the Day

via Other-Wordly

Makes Sense

I'm always uncomfortable, but I'll be damned if I'm ever absurd.

The Climax

 The next time someone asks me what my 'tat' means, now I can just direct them to my blog...after I punch them in the face.

'We feel the elation of Salome as she kisses the lips of the dead prophet whose mouth she has likened to 'ripe fruit' and 'a pomegranate cut in twain with a knife of ivory,' as if his lips truly were meant to be feasted on. Beardsley brilliantly captures and shares the ardor of the moment just after Salome had acquiesced to her necrophilic appetite and in his illustration we see her literally floating in the air, lifted to a state of suspended rapture above a puddle of blood...
In the upper left-hand corner of the picture we are reminded of the 'clusters of black grapes' to which Salome previously compared Iokanaan's hair in the text, again speaking of his body as something to be devoured, ravaged, thus reversing the traditional roles of woman and man in regards to sexuality'

text via www.victorianweb.org

You Know Who You Are...

maybe.

Seeing Red.

via ThisIsn'tHappiness

Speaking Volumes

via magnificentruin

Ethereal

It was Autumn, the springtime of death...

                                                               -Tom Robbins

By Day I’m an Omelet Chef, But By Night, I’m an Omelet Chef at Another Place.

Once I stayed the night with a friend and during an obscure conversation she explained to me how she insists on cooking eggs until they are slightly brown (which I believe to be a sin against all things edible)

That morning I awoke to great hunger...and of course, to my friend stating she would be making omelets for breakfast.  In my panic, I made up a ridiculous excuse as to why I couldn't consume eggs (for fear of being served a slightly browned omelet)  and I sat at the kitchen table and ate a tomato for breakfast.

Click the photo for a hilarious, omelet related tale.

Leashed

When I first glanced at this I thought that ghost was on a leash, being led by that witch.
...which made this photo so much cooler.

via SmoochonSight

Word of the Day

via Other-Wordly

Quilted

Sitting here wondering why my mother has yet to make me an orange and black quilt...

via blackbird designs

“I have spoken with God, and he has abandoned us”

Let's just take a moment to imagine that this is true (I'm pretty sure it isn't...)
but I'm too lazy to do the research.

In 1983, a team of deeply pious scientists conducted a radical experiment in an undisclosed facility. The scientists had theorized that a human without access to any senses or ways to perceive stimuli would be able to perceive the presence of God. They believed that the five senses clouded our awareness of eternity, and without them, a human could actually establish contact with God by thought. An elderly man who claimed to have “nothing left to live for” was the only test subject to volunteer. To purge him of all his senses, the scientists performed a complex operation in which every sensory nerve connection to the brain was surgically severed. Although the test subject retained full muscular function, he could not see, hear, taste, smell, or feel. With no possible way to communicate with or even sense the outside world, he was alone with his thoughts.

Scientists monitored him as he spoke aloud about his state of mind in jumbled, slurred sentences that he couldn’t even hear. After four days, the man claimed to be hearing hushed, unintelligible voices in his head. Assuming it was an onset of psychosis, the scientists paid little attention to the man’s concerns.
Two days later, the man cried that he could hear his dead wife speaking with him, and even more, he could communicate back. The scientists were intrigued, but were not convinced until the subject started naming dead relatives of the scientists. He repeated personal information to the scientists that only their dead spouses and parents would have known. At this point, a sizable portion of scientists left the study.
After a week of conversing with the deceased through his thoughts, the subject became distressed, saying the voices were overwhelming. In every waking moment, his consciousness was bombarded by hundreds of voices that refused to leave him alone. He frequently threw himself against the wall, trying to elicit a pain response. He begged the scientists for sedatives, so he could escape the voices by sleeping. This tactic worked for three days, until he started having severe night terrors. The subject repeatedly said that he could see and hear the deceased in his dreams.
Only a day later, the subject began to scream and claw at his non-functional eyes, hoping to sense something in the physical world. The hysterical subject now said the voices of the dead were deafening and hostile, speaking of hell and the end of the world. At one point, he yelled “No heaven, no forgiveness” for five hours straight. He continually begged to be killed, but the scientists were convinced that he was close to establishing contact with God.
After another day, the subject could no longer form coherent sentences. Seemingly mad, he started to bite off chunks of flesh from his arm. The scientists rushed into the test chamber and restrained him to a table so he could not kill himself. After a few hours of being tied down, the subject halted his struggling and screaming. He stared blankly at the ceiling as teardrops silently streaked across his face. For two weeks, the subject had to be manually rehydrated due to the constant crying. Eventually, he turned his head and, despite his blindness, made focused eye contact with a scientist for the first time in the study. He whispered “I have spoken with God, and he has abandoned us” and his vital signs stopped. There was no apparent cause of death.

via ThisisHolly

I've lost my head...

via WoodsmokeandPumpkins

Word of the Day

but you're not allowed to actually say it...
because that would be impossible.

October Country

This documentary first caught my eye last year...because of the title, naturally. But as I watched it, I became a little too fascinated by it. It's incredibly awkward and real, and reminded me so much of so many families I've known in rural West Virginia. It's that horrible train-wreck that you can't stop looking at, as you hate yourself for gawking.

and to wrap up todays lesson...

Yesterday I met the Devil...

and his name was Clyde.

image via Emphatic Reprieve Photography

Impossible Cupcakes

...my ass.

click me

Werewolf

I could liken you to a werewolf, the way you left me for dead 

But I admit that I provided a full moon...

                                                                            -F.Apple

image via Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault and Sarah Moon

I Remember Nothing More...

click below 

image via GoodnightTexas

Goodnight moon...

Music to relax by...
click below.

Moonlight.

 

I just want to be here.

 

After Midnight...

via SmoochonSight

If I ran a church...

this would be played before every service:

click Gods house

via winnetah

Directing the Dead

I choose to refer to Ray Crawford as an undertaker; it has to it, a certain je ne sais quoi that can only be matched by the personality of the individual that chooses it as a profession.   

  He calls himself a funeral director, which I find a tad overzealous seeing as though his clients aren’t particularly ‘directable’; nor are they notably opposed to his choreography for their big debut in that pine-box of a stage. However, it appeases my mind to imagine him down there in his workshop, stringing up the dead like marionettes and skillfully painting their faces with a squirrel-haired Bob Ross brush...all the while spouting off good-humored and unreciprocated Bob Ross banter. 

You make sure you bury the next one deep Ray, but not so deep that the Lord can’t find him.

via Cozine.

Halloween Head.

Hey kid, I like your moxie.

via HelloZombie

Sunday Night Cinema: The Story of a Murderer.

I forgot that I own this movie...and how much I love it.

This guy plays a fantastic creep.

click Jean-Baptiste

Hidden

 

 I have never found a companion as companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men, than when we stay in our chambers.  A man who is thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will...  

- Henry David Thoreau

Land of fog and sun

click the trees

perfect morning music.

Daily.

If I were a doctor, I would prescribe time in nature for nearly every affliction.

What mental torture looks like...

A letter from schizophrenic Emma Hauck to her husband.

It consists of only phrase "Herzensschatzi komm" (Sweetheart please come) and "komm komm komm" (come, come, come ) repeated over and over.

I Got a Name.

If I ever make a movie, there will be a murderous rampage set to this song.
I don't know why...but it just feels right.

click Patrick.

  I guess for now, I'll just listen to it on repeat and think murderous thoughts.

Pinky out.

via thegreatdepression

Azure.

click Ella.