Black Gate

There’s nothing like being faced with your own weirdness.

Last week a home improvement project forced me to pack up my beloved library for the weekend, including that creepy little statue from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Every last book had to be removed, and since I didn’t trust anyone else, I did it myself.

The eye-level shelves contained nostalgic memory joggers such as the complete set of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which represented the first review I ever did for Black Gate, and the hard cover copies of every book Anne Rice ever wrote, each personally signed to me (remember all the lousy weather you stood outside in to get those autographs?).

These two items may seem a bit strange to you, but that’s par for the course around my abode. And when I come across something odd, even for me, that’s saying something.

As I got toward the bottom shelves in the corner near the love seat, just left of the secret door leading down to the dungeon (kidding), I found I had collected a whole shelf of unusual books on the topic of death. And for those of you thinking “That sounds normal for her,” it really isn’t.

Unlike the “Goth Kids” on South Park, I am not, nor have I ever been, death obsessed. One summer working as an orderly at the local hospital cured me of that, believe me. Wheeling several of the real thing down to the morgue while the warmth was still dissipating was enough to put me off.

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I freely cop to having the sort of geeky sense of humor that is immediately triggered by someone coming up with the perfect movie quote for any given situation. For that matter, the level of hilarity is proportionately magnified by the obscurity of the quote, how quickly I was able to identify it, and any subtle, “insider” references the quote might invoke.

Recently at my day job (no, I’m not doing this whole Goth Chick thing from my own Eastern European castle…yet) as my team faced a particularly nasty and potentially explosive dilemma, the guy to my left leaned over and whispered, “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” At which point I disrupted the whole proceeding with one of those incontrollable fits of laughter I told you about earlier.

Though I’d be extremely skeptical to learn you’re a fan of Black Gate and haven’t done this sort of thing yourself, or for that matter, don’t know precisely where that quote originated, I’ll give you this one just for conversation sake; it’s the famous line uttered by Chief Brody when the enormous shark from Jaws rears up along side his small fishing boat and gives him the eyeball.

It is one of the most used favorites from my own repertoire and, though it doesn’t score impressively high on the obscurity scale, it never fails to get a reaction.

OK, you get the idea. So for the rest of these, you’re on your own for the context. However, I will recommend that if any of the movies quoted here are unfamiliar, the next thing you should do is get them on your movie watching schedule. They’re quotable for a reason, even if that reason is extreme cheesiness.

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Between August 31st and November 9th, 1888, the first widely documented serial killer known as “Jack the Ripper” brutally murdered five prostitutes in the heinous poverty that was the Whitechapel area of London.

In 2010, a Google search on “Jack the Ripper” returns over 2 million entries, and Amazon lists 605 books and 64 movies, all focused on an unsolved mystery that is 122 years old and which frankly, by today’s standards would hold the headline spot on CNN for a week at most.

I had to literally ask myself why?

Meaning I’ve been right there fascinated along with everyone else.

I’m not sure when I first became aware of Jack and his bloody doings, but I do recall that taking the after dark “Jack the Ripper Tour” was high on my list of priorities when I packed off to London the first time. 

There on a perfectly damp and foggy evening I, along with a couple of dozen other tourists, followed a guide wearing a fairly cheesy black cape and top hat through some very fragrant Whitechapel alleyways.  And though this neighborhood is a mostly respectable industrialized area today, it doesn’t take much encouragement to imagine coming upon the mangled mess of Polly Nichols spread unceremoniously across the wet bricks.

OK, now that I’ve engaged your gag reflex and you’re thinking I should try going someplace nice like Vegas next time, I will tell you that at that moment I completely understood the term “morbid fascination.”

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Chicago once again played host to the IHCPS, February 26-29, but to say the show as a whole was a disappointment is the understatement of the century.

This is the event around which my entire calendar revolves, and it usually requires a full ten-hour day to visit all of the exhibitors. I actually have a countdown clock on my computer ticking away the days to this most anticipated of events.

However, in their first year back after a two-year run in Vegas, this year’s show was less than 50% of the size of previous years. Gone was “The Dark Zone,” my most favorite area, which used to take up the entire upper floor of the convention center, and where Hollywood’s finest special effect magicians from the horror genre showcased their latest wares.

The exhibition hall itself was spread thinly across two rooms instead of three, and was heavily dominated by been-there-seen-that costumes and drug store decorations.

Even the “party” part of the IHCPS seemed to be missing. In the past, yet another hall was occupied by general party items, not Halloween themed. Though a little tame for my taste, I always found one or two cool things to share with you, as well as for my own future use. All in all the IHCPS consumed the entire convention center in prior years.

And sacrilege of sacrilege, this year my beloved “Dark Zone” space was occupied by…I can barely write it…a GOLF show. Oh the humanity!

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Last week I happened to catch an episode of Haunted Places on the Travel Channel in which The Stanley Hotel was being profiled.

If you’re not familiar, this is the amazing location in Colorado which was Stephen King’s inspiration for The Shining. His stay there freaked him out so badly that to this day the author claims he’s convinced Mrs. Stanley is still hanging around playing the piano in the drawing room where she dropped dead in 1936.

The 1980 movie The Shining starring Shelley Duvall and Jack Nicholson is definitely in my Top Ten, and in a moment of weirdness (yes, just one moment) I suddenly became obsessed with what happened to the little kid with the famous finger friend “Tony” (remember, it was his finger that kept saying the unforgettable “REDRUM,” which is “murder” spelled backwards).

The documentary footage that came with the anniversary edition of the DVD shows director Stanley Kubrick as highly protective of little Danny Lloyd during filming. So much so that an interview with the six-year-old clearly indicates he was unaware he was shooting a horror movie at all, and instead thought it was some sort of action or mystery story.

IMDB.com said very little about Danny, who virtually disappeared after his iconic role, acting only once more in 1982.

He would be 35 years old now, and according to the web site is currently a college professor who in 1999 was somewhere in the Midwest, in 2007 was in Elizabethtown, KY, and then moved on to a college in Missouri.

I hate to admit this, but I am an expert cyber-stalker.

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Though I am an unapologetic fan of the Harry Potter books and movies, not to mention the upcoming theme park at Universal Studios, Florida, I have been a fan of sorcery and magic for most of my life.

I can trace this fascination back my discovery of the 1975 Disney flick Escape to Witch Mountain and the Brain De Palma classic The Fury, though both story lines dealt with telekinetic matters rather than witchcraft. The Fury tells the heinously enjoyable tale of a young woman who can cause any old scar you might have to burst open if you’re around her when she gets agitated. Let’s face it, watching Samatha breeze through her housework with the twitch of her nose in Bewitched couldn’t really hold up against the ability to make people bleed out of their eyes by looking at them.

No, my hard-core interest really kicked in when I read what remains one of my top ten favorite books of all time, Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour. It lavishly follows the history of the Mayfair witches from 1689 through modern times, documenting decades of consequences connected to the family’s innate abilities, as well as the fortune and misfortune brought on by their guardian demon. It was also the book that started my love affair with New Orleans.

The story attracted the attention of Warner Brothers, who optioned the rights, but alas, the movie version descended into development hell where it continues to languish. But from that point on, tampering with a little practical magic became a bit of a hobby for me.

Recently I came across a gem of a book, Le Grimoire Enchante (“A Sorcerer’s Cookbook”) that is not only beautifully bound in coffee-table format, but is printed in an opulent Victorian style with intricate illustrations. Each dish produces a particular result and has a list of easy-to-locate ingredients, along with the context of the spell and preparation instructions. Recipes such as Borage Bread, an ancient Greek treat slipped to those from whom you wish to extract a confession, and Raspberry-Hawthorn Jam, used by the Celts to protect loved ones, fill 231 pages of this historically fact-filled volume. And with no “eye of newt” to be found anywhere, you can quickly cook up your own love or money potion just in time for dinner.

For more traditional charms there is The Book of Spells, another one of my favorites, which I received as a gift when I was between jobs. This hardcover pocket book contains magic from all parts of the world including the Middle East and Asia along with fascinating background information on both the spell itself as well as the ingredients. When I received the book there was a ribbon marker between the pages called “A Ritual to Pave the Way to a Good Career.” Come on, you’d have tried it too.

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It doesn’t take much psychic ability to figure out a lot about a person just by walking through their front door. We look for subtle indications that our impression outside their abode was either right on or dead wrong. We keep an eye out for hidden aspects of their personality that might reveal themselves in subtle ways. For instance, did you stumble upon a racy mag stacked amongst the Better Homes and Gardens at your boss’ summer BBQ party? BINGO!

However, there are some people whose living arrangements simply scream out a more tangible and obvious message about what’s going on between their ears. As kids, their rooms were wallpapered with visual representations of what they were into, and the moment you walked through the door you realized that YES, this was clearly your friend’s personal space, for better or worse.

But what happens later, when those particularly expressive individuals get jobs and eventually, heaven forbid, expendable income?

Welcome to Chateaux du Goth Chick.

I want to preface what I’m about to tell you by saying that by in large, the really creepy stuff is relegated to my office, where I mentioned last week the cleaning lady refuses to go. This is fine with me, considering how fragile the voodoo doll collection is. The arrangement also makes it possible to simply close the door, thereby preserving the delicate sensibilities of some of my guests.

The rest of the house was done up with Mr. Goth Chick’s approval. As most of you gentlemen know, your biggest battle is to keep your surroundings from becoming too “girly” or worse yet, from looking like an advertisement straight out of a yuppie catalog. I can tell you with all due respect, Mr. Goth Chick has a whole different set of concerns.

So let’s take a little tour shall we?

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I’m sure you’d never guess this, but my taste is a little left of center. 

I have a full suit of armor I dubbed “Prince Vlad” which looms large over my comfy reading chair.  For my last birthday, my amazingly normal friends Mr. and Mrs. Disney presented me with a picture of Tippi Hedren from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, which was autographed by Tippi herself. I was nearly brought to tears I was so touched.  I have a full-on voodoo shelf with authentic trinkets from Africa and the Caribbean, which Madam Laveaux herself would envy. 

I think I should mention here that the Catholic cleaning lady will not go near my office.

As it would naturally follow, my sense of humor is a tad off too; as in I got a nearly fatal fit of giggles during a relative’s funeral.  Though I admit this was entirely improper and uncalled for, I take heart in the idea that the deceased would probably have found the cause as hilarious as I did. 

My parents continue to pull me aside and give me “the talk” about not embarrassing them before important family events, something Mr. Goth Chick finds especially amusing, but I think you see my point.

It is because of these unfortunate traits that I find myself drawn to the strange and unusual gems of the literary macabre; often those items tucked into back shelves at the book store or better yet, at the flea market.

In my defense, the written material which occupies the place closest to my blackish, goth chick heart wasn’t written for me specifically and did find its way to a publisher and into the general marketplace. 

Therefore, I conclude I must share this morbid sense of humor with others, closeted though you may be.

Which is why it my pleasure this week to share some my favorites with you.  Their titles speak to their literal subject matters so I’ve just included a couple of succulent tidbits from each.  Ironically, most of this advice would be just as easily at home in the latest “How to Succeed in Business” publication, but there you go.

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I have had the distinct good fortune of traveling to twenty-three countries and have, as I mentioned in prior posts, engaged in various ghost-hunting activities in more than a few of them.

But honestly, these expeditions are largely tourist-driven and aimed mainly at US and British travelers, which makes total sense. We started as a British colony so it follows that what scares the crap out of them would have translated across the pond to us.

But what about elsewhere in the world?

That got me to thinking about what scares people from other cultures and what, if anything, do those spooks have in common with ours? So I reached out to the many friends I have made along the way to ask them what haunts they grew up with.

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A year ago I would have said that if you didn’t live in the Midwest (and basically that means Chicago to me) you really don’t understand the true meaning of the word “cold.” 

Nothing turns you blue faster than that already chill Canadian air barreling its way south over a frozen Lake Michigan.  I mean, where else can you hear the term “freezing fog” as part of the normal forecast?

So why would any sane human being choose to live somewhere the temperature is at or below freezing more than half the year? 

In the immortal words of Chris Farley, who kept a condo in Chicago until his death in 1997, “The cold weather keeps out the riff-raff.”

Thanks to The Shining, we all know what happens if you don’t have meaningful mental stimulation during the dark months of winter.  Therefore, as we hunker down by the fire with our favorite form of entertainment, we scavenge for cool and unusual things to get our sluggish blood moving. 

Here are some interesting tidbits that may entice me to get out of my Nightmare Before Christmas fuzzy slippers and venture forth.

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