The Ultimate Haunted House?

Winchester Mystery House

Haunted houses are a popular feature of horror novels and films, and the stories behind the Winchester Mystery House are especially intriguing. The house was built without a master plan by its owner, Sara Winchester, who was the heir to the Winchester Repeating Rifle Company fortune. 

According to popular belief, Sara Winchester consulted a medium after the early deaths of her child and husband and was advised that she needed to move West and build a house for herself and the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifle. The construction had to be non-stop: otherwise she would die. Another version of this story is that the medium advised her to build the house in order to thwart the evil spirits that killed her husband and child. This version of the story might account for the maze-like construction of the house and its many dead ends to trick the spirits and keep them from finding her.

Mrs. Winchester moved to California from Connecticut and purchased an unfinished farmhouse in northern California. Work began immediately on the house by 13 workers, who labored night and day for almost 38 years. Construction only stopped upon her death at the age of 83.

Today the house is a major tourist attraction. Among its features are the following:

• 160 rooms
• 47 fireplaces
• 10,0000 windows
• 17 chimneys

There are stairs and windows opening onto walls, as well as a staircase leading to a ceiling, and doors and staircases leading nowhere. The number “13” (perhaps intended to ward off spirits) is prominent in the design of the house. (The newsletter for the mystery house is called The Thirteenth Hour.) As well, there is a séance room with one entrance, three exits, and an eight-foot drop through a secret door to a kitchen below. Visitors are warned to stay with the tour group or risk getting lost for hours in the labyrinth of the house.

Visitors have reported cold spots, and one of the long-time restoration workers reported seeing an apparition inside the house. One psychic stated that he could hear ongoing sawing and hammering by the 13 dead laborers in the other world as they continued to build the house.

For the website of the Winchester Mystery House, see www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/, which provides a detailed history of the house, as well as an explanation of the “13” numerology in its design.‎ 

For a YouTube video by the Travel Channel on the world's creepiest destinations, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dy0TnZ_vpk. (Both sites, as well as Wikipedia, were used as sources for this post.) There are numerous photographs and other YouTube videos online for you to explore.

Happy touring, but don't get lost!

(Reprinted from the Behind the Walls of Nightmare blog post of June 11, 2013)

Horror Poetry for National Poetry Month

In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Horror Writers Association is hosting its second horror poetry contest known as the HWA Horror Poetry Showcase. It's open to everyone, and the last day for submissions is April 30, 2015.

For submission guidelines, please click here.

A panel of judges will select four poems to be published on the HWA website. At the judges' discretion, the HWA may also publish an electronic chapbook of qualifying poems.

To read last year's winning poems on the HWA website (under April: Poetry), please click here.

Revisiting the Works of Edgar Allan Poe

From time to time, we like to re-print posts that have been extremely popular in this blog. At one point, we ran a "masters of horror" series which included such names as Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker. By far, the most popular of these posts was the one on Edgar Allan Poe. So if you missed it the first time, here you go.

Poe's Writing

Although Poe was much maligned during his  lifetime and immediately following his death at age forty, he is now known for his profound influence on horror, science fiction, and detective fiction. Poe's short stories and poems are in the Gothic tradition, but he goes far beyond Gothic themes and conventions to focus on the psychology of fear: what Poe refers to as “the terror … of the soul”.

Poe is also a master of dramatic irony and first person narrative, which leads to a form of “dawning” horror as the reader uncovers the protagonist's intent prior to the victim. In his short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” the reader discovers with horror, as the story unfolds, that the narrator Montresor actually intends to "bury" Fortunato alive inside the wall in his cellar. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the unreliable narrator tries to convince us of his innocence and sanity while recounting his murder of an old man.

Poe's use of atmosphere and symbolism is also a hallmark of his writing. In his masterpiece “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the house itself becomes alive as a character in the short story, and its decay and destruction go hand in hand with the spiritual dissolution of its owner, Roderick Usher. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the heart which the narrator hears beating beneath the floorboards is a manifestation of his own guilt. In his poem “The Raven”—which many readers may now, for better or for worse, identify with The Simpsons parody in the Halloween special—the bird becomes a personification of loss, sorrow, and premature death, which are recurrent themes in Poe's work, frequently associated by critics with the early loss of his own wife to tuberculosis.

Poe's Legacy

Poe's influence on modern horror in literature and films is extensive. In literature, think of such novels as Peter Straub's Ghost Story and Stephen King's The Shining and Pet Sematary, and in films think of the works of Alfred Hitchcock and Roger Corman.

In popular music, Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination were the inspiration for the first concept album of the same name by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson joining forces as the Alan Parsons Project. Released in 1976, the album features terrific vocals by Arthur Brown ("The Tell-Tale Heart") and John Miles ("The Cask of Amontillado"), among others.

Poe is also regarded as the father of modern detective fiction through such short stories as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter,” which influenced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and laid the groundwork for subsequent generations of fictional sleuths. In fact, the annual award to mystery writers of excellence is the Edgar award.

Poe's detective Dupin uses a technique he refers to as "ratiocination," in which he applies his considerable powers of reason and analysis to the solution of the mysteries. (Dare we say that Sherlock Holmes follows in Dupin's footsteps?)

Poe also had a strong influence on science fiction, including the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells.

Why We Admire Poe's Work

We admire Poe's story-telling skills and the psychology of his stories: the theme of terror as a projection of one's inner fears and turmoil.  "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Cask of Amontillado" are two of the greatest horror stories ever written. As allegories that explore the fear of death, the futility of denying our mortality, and the terror that waits for us in the dark, they cannot be matched.
  
Internet Resources

If you're interested in [re]acquainting yourself with the works of Poe, there are many Internet sources available. The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore at http://www.eapoe.org/ has an extensive list of his works, writings on Poe, and related websites. You can also visit http://poestories.com/stories.php to access his short stories and other works.

Fear the Walking Dead

The title of The Walking Dead companion series was announced this past Friday to many boos and hisses. The title is Fear the Walking Dead, and tv.com has suggested forty-three alternate titles that would have been better. (The working title of the new show had in fact been Cobalt, as I indicated in an earlier post.)

The companion series has already been signed up for two seasons and will start airing in late summer 2015.

If you're a Walking Dead fan, you'll probably be more concerned with the quality of the scripts and acting in the new series and less with its title. I'm probably not the only one who thinks the quality of the scripts in the original series has deteriorated since the show first aired. In my opinion, the show has become so focused on "survival of the fittest" themes that the larger issues of coping with widespread devastation while maintaining a semblance of humanity and attempting to rebuild society seem to have gone by the wayside.

And speaking of survival of the fittest, am I the only one who thinks that very strong characters have been eliminated from the show while very weak characters remain? (I won't name names, but I'm sure you can single out the ones.)

All said, I'm still looking forward to the new series, mainly because it will be a chance at a fresh start.

Themes of the 2015 World Horror Convention

This is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Wold Horror Convention to be held on May 7-10 in Atlantic, Georgia. These are the seven themes of the 2015 event:

• The Weird South:  "Why does the South provide such a rich playground for authors and filmmakers exploring the darker side of humanity?" 
• Pushing the Diaspora Darkly: Atlantic was the city at the centre of the civil rights movement. The convention will look at "diversity and an emerging global view of horror as it moves into the 21st century with a new generation of writers from different cultural backgrounds." 
• Terrifying Tropes and Deadly Definitions: "Classic monsters will still get their due, but we’ll be looking for new angles to challenge and inspire, as well as exploring sub-genre definitions and cross-pollination with other genres."
• YA Rocks: Why is horror so popular for young adults? 
• The State of Horror, 1991: A look back at the founding of the WHC and the hottest horror topics and authors at that time.
• The Art of Fear: An examination of the "latest trends in horror art, comics, artist spotlights, the business of art, and other media-related programming."
• The Business of Horror: How "to maximize the latest developments in marketing and publishing."

For more information, please visit http://www.whc2015.org/ and http://www.worldhorrorconvention.com/.

More New Spring Horror Releases

As promised in last week's post, here are some other horror books to look forward to:


March

Ellen Datlow (ed.) – The Doll Collection 

An illustrated anthology featuring all-original dark tales of dolls from bestselling and award-winning authors, compiled by one of the top editors in the field. Among the writers featured are
Joyce Carol Oates, Seanan McGuire, Carrie Vaughn, Pat Cadigan, Tim Lebbon, Richard Kadrey, Genevieve Valentine, and Jeffrey Ford.


April

Joe Hill – The Fireman

In a world overtaken by a deadly and dramatic new virus, the protagonist is determined to live long enough to deliver her baby. But when it only takes a spark to start a deadly blaze, she’s going to need some help from the mysterious fireman....


May

Sarah Lotz – Day Four

Four days into a five-day singles cruise on the Gulf of Mexico, the aging ship Beautiful Dreamer stops dead in the water. With no electricity and no cellular signals, the passengers and crew have no way to call for help. But everyone is certain that rescue teams will come looking for them soon. All they have to do is wait.
That is, until the toilets stop working and the food begins to run out. When the body of a woman is discovered in her cabin the passengers start to panic. There’s a murderer on board the Beautiful Dreamer… and maybe something worse.

June

Christopher Golden – Tin Men

Economies are collapsing, environmental disasters are widespread, and war is the backdrop to life. In response the military has developed a force of elite soldiers to keep the peace. A force like nothing seen before … code-named Tin Man, soldiers are virtually transported to inhabit robot frames in war-torn countries.


Paul Tremblay – A Head Full of Ghosts 

The lives of a normal suburban New England family are torn apart when the fourteen-year-old daughter begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. To her parents’ despair, the doctors are unable to stop her descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help....


Thanks to A Fantastical Librarian blog for the selection of new horror books. If you are interested in new science fiction releases, there are also many listed on this site.

Upcoming Horror Fiction

 Here are some upcoming horror novels for spring and summer that you might like to check out.

Within These Walls by Ania Ahlborn - This supernatural thriller questions how far an individual would go for success, and what  he would be capable of if the promise of forever was real. (Release Date: April 21)

Also by the same author, Brother, the tale of a teenager trying to break free of his family's deeply-disturbing traditions that involve missing young girls and screams in the night. (Release Date: September 8).

Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it’s served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don’t knock on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing as to what’s buried in the Morrows’ backyard.

But nineteen-year-old Michael Morrow isn’t like the rest of his family. He doesn’t take pleasure in the screams that echo through the trees. Michael pines for normalcy, and he’s sure that someday he’ll see the world beyond West Virginia. - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.co.uk/Brother/Ania-Ahlborn/9781476783734#sthash.b1oKsOJ3.dpuf

Dawn of the Dead by George A. Romero and Susanna Sparrow - This novel is based on the cult movie classic of the same name and is being re-issued with an introduction by Simon Pegg. Zombies have overpowered the living and ravaged the world. Society has collapsed as humans race to save themselves. There are four survivors with nowhere to hide who must face a final showdown with these monsters. (Release Date: June 2)

[Adapted from a post on The Baryon Review (Barry R. Hunter) and supplemented by book descriptions from Barnes & Noble]

Stay tuned for more new releases next week!: