Trusted by 500+ fans to find the fun in the funereal, the absurd in the macabre, and delight in the darkness. Join fiction author Morgan Delaney three times a week for genre-bending stories of cozy horror, dark fantasy and a brain with mind of its own...
Shut Your Face & Eat Your Biscuit
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Hey there, While still in school, my friend and I (Hey, John!) went to the Aran Islands by ourselves for Halloween. Nowadays, you’d be arrested if you let your children go alone to a group of islands off the west coast of Ireland, but back in the “good old days,” it was fine. Actually, around that time, myself and John wrote some poetry, so possibly we were *sent* to the Aran Islands to make us stop. Who can say? Anyway. Everyone got into the Halloween spirit. Either you put on a mask and dressed up, or you left your door open to provide tea and biscuits to masked weirdos. Because the island is so small, everyone knew everyone else – except me and John, and a few others – so once you masked up, you had to keep your mouth shut. Saying, “I’d love a custard cream, thanks, Dermot,” would give you away. Walking into town past groups of horribly made-up and completely silent people was great fun. And very spooky. Which is what I have for you today, with two video recommendations! The Humans is a slow, nebulously oppressive comedy drama. When Brigid and Richard move into their first flat, they invite Brigid’s family over to celebrate Thanksgiving. This won’t be for everyone. It’s verrry slow, and nothing happens, but the characters, dialogue, cinematography – and the dreadful, dreadful flat – are all excellent. I loved it. Check out The Humans here. My second recommendation is a short film on YouTube, so you’ve no excuse not to watch it. A man’s love for Whose Line Is It Anyway and The Mask takes him to a dark place… Grab a cup of something, and your comfort blanket, for The Mask! P.S. This is just one of the emails I wrote a couple of weeks ago. |
Dark, Strange and Fantastic Fiction
Trusted by 500+ fans to find the fun in the funereal, the absurd in the macabre, and delight in the darkness. Join fiction author Morgan Delaney three times a week for genre-bending stories of cozy horror, dark fantasy and a brain with mind of its own...
it’s been all bloody go here at the HQ of the Official Hawkinge-By-Hythe Historical Society. First, I had those man sniffles, then a sudden change in weather gave me a migraine. And then I got lumbago. Look, I hate making a fuss, but I’m putting my foot down – carefully, because of the lumbago – whoever has the Morgan voodoo doll, could you stop now, please? The internet tells me “lumbago” is an “outdated term for lower back pain”, and I agree. We should all be using the more evocative German...
Made you look, you dirty duck. Made you look for nothing. That’s the version we sang as children after tricking someone into looking at nothing. Or “gnaw-tin” with the proper Irish accent. Different places around the world have different versions of the song. Perhaps you were a dirty crook rather than a duck. Or at risk of being turned into turtle soup. But the game is best played in Germany, where they don’t seem to know it. When we moved to Heidelberg, our flatmate Anne loved to suddenly...
Listen. Do you hear that? Numbers, floating in the air around us. Trying to tell me something. Listen. It can’t be a coincidence because in my next book, The Cat Wore Black, radios come to Hawkinge-By-Hythe. People love them. Radio gives them all sorts of things. Music, news, entertainment. And when the station stops broadcasting at night, the radios transmit strange random numbers. Which gives them the willies. Then I read in Wired that plastic surgeons use the formula of the Fibonacci...