Bram Stoker Award Winners

Each year the Horror Writers Association presents the Bram Stoker Awards for superior achievement in horror writing. This year's Bram Stoker Awards Weekend was held in conjunction with the World Horror Convention in New Orleans (in a hotel reputed to be haunted).

The following 2012 Bram Stoker Award winners were announced:

Superior Achievement in a NOVEL
The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)
Superior Achievement in a FIRST NOVEL
Life Rage by L.L. Soares (Nightscape Press)
Superior Achievement in a YOUNG ADULT NOVEL
Flesh & Bone by Jonathan Maberry (Simon & Schuster)
Superior Achievement in a GRAPHIC NOVEL
Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times by Rocky Wood and Lisa Morton (McFarland and Co., Inc.)
Superior Achievement in LONG FICTION
The Blue Heron by Gene O’Neill (Dark Regions Press)
Superior Achievement in SHORT FICTION
“Magdala Amygdala” by Lucy Snyder (Dark Faith: Invocations, Apex Book Company)
Superior Achievement in a SCREENPLAY
The Cabin in the Woods” by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard (Mutant Enemy Productions, Lionsgate)
Superior Achievement in an ANTHOLOGY
Shadow Show edited by Mort Castle and Sam Weller (HarperCollins)
Superior Achievement in a FICTION COLLECTION (tie)
New Moon on the Water by Mort Castle (Dark Regions Press)
Black Dahlia and White Rose: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco Press)
Superior Achievement in NON-FICTION
Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween by Lisa Morton (Reaktion Books)
Superior Achievement in a POETRY COLLECTION
Vampires, Zombies & Wanton Souls by Marge Simon (Elektrik Milk Bath Press)

For more information on the Bram Stoker Awards, please visit the Horror Writers Association blog at http://www.horror.org/blog/.

If you are interested in learning more about Bram Stoker, for whom the awards are named, please see my post of May 21, 2013, at wallsofnightmare.blogspot.ca/2013/05/master-of-horror-bram-stoker.html.


The 2014 World Horror Convention and Bram Stoker Awards presentation will be held in Portland, Oregon, in May 2014.

Book Review of Night Chill by Jeff Gunhus

Behind the Walls of Nightmare is pleased to review Night Chill by Jeff Gunhus, who is also the author of the Middle Grade/YA series The Templar Chronicles, as well as numerous motivational career guides. To learn more about him, please visit his website at http://www.jeffgunhus.com/.

 Book Summary

Jack Tremont moves his family to the quiet mountains of western Maryland hoping to leave behind a troubled past and restart his life. Instead, he finds himself caught up in a nightmare when his daughter Sarah is targeted by Nate Huckley, a mysterious and horrifying stranger driven by a dark power that will stop at nothing to possess Sarah. When Sarah goes missing, suspicion falls on Jack and he must uncover the secrets of the small mountain town of Prescott City and face the evil secret hidden there. As he digs further, he learns the conspiracy reaches more deeply than he could have imagined. Finally, he will have to face the question, What is a father willing to do to save his child? The answer? Anything. Anything at all.

Buy link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CRKPTL6

Our Review

Night Chill is an engaging novel whose subject matter will appeal to readers of both medical thrillers and horror novels. It moves quickly with an interesting storyline and numerous plot turns. At the heart of the novel are the themes of love and redemption as a father, Jack Tremont, tries to save his abducted daughter, having earlier killed a young girl in a car accident that still haunts him. These themes are paralleled in the sub-plot as his friend Max tries to find redemption by saving his own young daughter from a ravaging illness.

Gunhus also introduces the character of Lonetree, whose initial focus is on seeking revenge on behalf of his family, but who gradually develops a close relationship with Jack and becomes his ally in the quest to save his daughter Sarah.The relationship between the two provides a form of comic relief in the novel as Lonetree, the ex-Navy Seal, tries to coach Jack as to the proper methods of rescuing someone.

Night Chill is a suspenseful read, full of villains, especially the chilling Nate Huckley. The novel's ending also hints at more to come. After all, does evil ever really die?

The 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 (but undocumented) 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)!

What's New in the Queue

If you are interested in following up on my Bram Stoker post of May 21, 2013, you might enjoy a new book by historian Jim Steinmeyer entitled

Who Was Dracula? Bram Stoker's Trail of Blood.

The author discusses the people and stories behind the Transylvanian legend of Count Dracula, considers the sources influencing Stoker, and depicts the life of Stoker and his development as a writer.

                                                                       

  Joe Hill's latest novel NOS4A2 features a young girl named Victoria McQueen who is the only victim ever to escape from the notorious Charlie Manx. He is rumored to have kidnapped dozens of children, taking them to a place called Christmasland. When Manx dies after years in prison, his body disappears. He is once again on the road hunting—and this time he has McQueen's child whom she must rescue.

 

While awaiting the release of Doctor Sleep, you might want to investigate Stephen King's Joyland, due to be released in early June. The prolific horror novelist has created a crime fiction thriller in Joyland. The novel is set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, and it tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder.

It's Raining . . . Frogs

It may rain cats and dogs only metaphorically, but there have been numerous documented cases of frog and fish rainfall. Cases of such rainfalls, often associated in the popular mind with Biblical curses, have been reported frequently in modern times.

Here are some examples:

• In 1977, thousands of frogs fell from the sky in Brignoles, France.
  
• On June 7, 2005, thousands of frogs rained on Odzaci, a small town in northwestern Serbia.
  
• At the end of February 2010, residents of Lajamanu, a small Australian town, saw hundreds of spangled perch fall from the sky.
  
• The United Kingdom is especially prone to falling frogs, having experienced a number of episodes, the most recent being in Bromley, England.
  

Many scientists believe that tornadic waterspouts—a tornado that forms over land and travels over water—may be responsible for frog and fish rainfalls. Other scientists theorize that any unusually powerful updraft could lift small organisms or organic material into the sky during a storm. (An updraft is a wind current caused by warm air from high pressure areas near the earth rising into cooler, low-pressure areas in the atmosphere.)

Of course, if you are Stephen King, the frogs have teeth and appear in an annual rainfall to prey upon their skeptics... (See his short story “Rainy Season” in Nightmares and Dreamscapes.)

If you're interested in taking a look at frog and fish rainfall, there are numerous YouTube videos on this subject.

Master of Horror, Bram Stoker

Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula

This is the third in a series of posts featuring masters of horror. In this post, I'll discuss Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula.


 Bram Stoker's Dracula

Although Bram Stoker was not the first Victorian-era writer to deal with the vampire theme, his 1897 novel Dracula is recognized as a classic in terms of its pervasive influence on the horror genre. Stoker was a prolific short story and novel writer, as well as the business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London. He was also a member of the literary staff of London's Daily Telegraph.

Prior to writing Dracula, Stoker spent several years researching European folklore and mythological stories of vampires. Like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Stoker's novel is epistolary in form, using a series of letters and different points of view to recount the story of Count Dracula, who attains immortality by draining the blood of his victims. Dracula also deals with the themes of man's desire for immortality versus the transitory nature of his existence; his lust for forbidden knowledge; and the epic battle of good versus evil. 

The Legacy of Dracula
The legacy of this novel has been immense. The vampire has become synonymous with horror in the popular imagination, and the concept of the “Undead” (which was the original title of the novel), an evil entity that cannot be destroyed but rises up again and again, is central to the horror genre. There have been over two hundred films based on the Dracula character. In literature, the novel has influenced such diverse writers as Stephen King and Anne Rice. The Horror Writers Association bestows the Bram Stoker Awards each year for excellence in horror writing.

Internet Resources

 If you would like to [re]discover Dracula, please see the Bram Stoker website at http://bramstoker.org/ for copies of his works, as well as biographical information. Dracula is in the public domain and is available for free download through various sites on the Internet.

Of Ghost Ships and Unexplained Disappearances

The existence of ghost ships missing their crews but otherwise undisturbed has been the subject of interest and debate, inspiring innumerable horror films and novels. I was amazed to discover, however, in an article in The Guardian that these ghost ships are continuing to haunt the sea even into the 21^st century.

Perhaps the most famous of ghost ships is the Mary Celeste. On December 5, 1872, the ship was found drifting in the Strait of Gibraltar. The cargo and personal belongings of the passengers were found intact, but none of its passengers was ever found—dead or alive. The last entry in the ship's log was dated 11 days earlier. Researchers discovered that the Mary Celeste had previously been named the Amazon and had been renamed to discourage superstitious talk about the ship being haunted. (The new name doesn't seem to have helped much!)

In 1921, the Carroll A Deering washed up on a beach in North Carolina. Despite exhaustive investigation by various U.S. Government departments, there was never any official explanation for the disappearance of the crew, although it is commonly thought that they mutinied. Eerily, the next day's meal was being prepared at the time of the ship's abandonment.

The merchant vessel Joyita was discovered abandoned in the Pacific in 1955 with no sign of its 25 passengers and crew members. A subsequent inquiry found that the vessel was in a poor state of repair, but determined that the fate of the passengers and crew was "inexplicable on the evidence submitted at the inquiry". 
 
In 2006 the tanker Jian Seng was discovered off the cost of Queensland, Australia. Its crew was missing, and investigators could not determine the origin of the vessel or its owner. A quantity of rice was found on board the vessel, but there was no sign of human activity or indication that the vessel was being used illegally for poaching, carrying drugs, or people smuggling. 
 
In April 2007 the catamaran Kaz II was found near the Great Barrier Reef. Its sails were up, the engine was running, a meal was set to be eaten, life jackets and survival equipment remained on board, but there was no sign of its three-man crew.

In 2008 the Taiwanese fishing boat Tai Ching 21 was found drifting in the Pacific Ocean near Kiribati. There was evidence of a fire aboard the ship, but no mayday call was received, and a search of 21,000 square miles found no trace of the captain or 28 crew members.

Various reasons have been cited for these disappearances, and in some cases the ships have been in obvious distress, and life rafts have been missing. The most intriguing cases are those involving ships like the Mary Celeste in which nothing appears to be out-of-order . . .and yet the ships are devoid of life.

For the full text of The Guardian article reporting on these various disappearances, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/shortcuts/2012/mar/26/ghost-ships-oceans-japanese-boat.